Posts Tagged ‘doorways’

I hadn’t expected it and maybe it was the change from the slate blue lake to the closeness of the green of the island, but once I set foot upon Innisfallen, I knew it was a special place. I wonder if, as I suspect,  it is inherently spiritual or if the centuries of learning, contemplative practice and service make it a place more spiritual than most.

I wonder if that is possible, that any one place can be more alive than others. I doubt it.

I suspect very strongly that Innisfallen is inherently spiritual, but I also suspect very strongly that the years of work that happened there make that spirituality more available to the dull senses of the all-too-common and limited human.

At any rate, as soon as I set foot upon the island, I knew. It was like seeing a lovers face after a long absence, but it was also the thrill of new love; the excitement of seeing new life and knowing that that life is surfacing from somewhere deep within the cosmos, emerging here for whatever reason. I knew it, and I was thankful for knowing it.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a grey and windy day, and only the first memory is a memory.

The sound of layers of jackets smacking in the wind, the moisture of wind-torn eyes on my cheek – or was it sideways rain? No, the sideways rain was with the Cailleach. She and the red haired kid in shorts looking sideways at the fekkin toorists were a day still far away, yet to come.

Another time, maybe. Here it was only me and the wind. And the tears that were not tears.

A grey and windy day, and I’d already waited five minutes.

Will this be the last time for me at the Hill of Tara? The last time I will stand upon the Mound of Hostages?

Only the first memory is a memory, all subsequent memories are memories of the memory, and now I am not standing upon the mound, I am cowering within it.

Cowering within it, with only the shaft of the sunrise once a year to tease me with thoughts of freedom and of me.

Read the rest of this entry »

The second he put his thumb in his mouth, he knew it. The instant he put his thumb, burnt from the salmon of wisdom, in his mouth, he was in trouble. It wasn’t so much that Finnegas would be angry. Finnegas was too wise to be angry. No, Fionn was in trouble because Fionn was now Fionn. Fionn was now Fionn with all the wisdom of the world, with all the wisdom of Fionn. Nothing would be the same ever again. He could not stay at the river with Finnegas any longer. He could not stay with Fionn any longer. He knew too much. He was in too much trouble.

Cormac mac Airt was in trouble.

The moment Cormac mac Airt saw that mysterious youth on the green, was the precise moment when Cormac mac Airt was in trouble. The glittering branch could have been named “Troubles Herald”. Ahh, the sweet red of trouble in those the nine apples. Cormac was in trouble. He was prepared to pay any price for that trouble, the price of trouble.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, being human is too big for religion.

Sometimes, all I want to do is listen to Fionn tell me about the sweetest music of the world.

There has been a lot of ruckus going on lately. A lot of growing and outgrowing. All around me I hear people saying the same thing… I’ve outgrown this or that, I’m in limbo, I don’t get it anymore… To some, both those who say it and those who hear it, this is a cause for dismay, to others amusement. Some, like me, silently nod their heads in empathy.

All I can say is that maybe I’ve outgrown the need to know if I have outgrown anything or even if I have grown at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

It happens, doesn’t it?
The day comes when the world pushes open the door we have closed against the world.
-John Moriarty, What the Curlew Said

It does happen, doesn’t it?

That fateful day of the door crashing in on us, pushed open by the world, different levels of the world, that in one way or the other, we have been avoiding.

The fateful splintering of the door of denial, escapism and addiction. The door shattered by a reality that is larger than we imagined, larger even than we can imagine.

Thus shattered, the floodwaters of Reality come rushing in. A Reality made not of reality that we might know something of, but a Reality that is far beyond anything that even reality knows anything of. A Reality that includes, transcends and integrates. A Reality that has suffered long enough in its exclusion, an impatient Reality, a Reality needing to be on with its work of transformation, its task of becoming, its labor of emerging through us, into us. A Reality that, in actuality, amounts to little more than boundless Potentiality.

A Reality brimming with Potentiality already crashing over the edges of our perception, already straining the hinges of the soul.

Read the rest of this entry »