Posts Tagged ‘home’

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 »

But for now we are in trouble. We have been raided. We are dead. We find ourselves in the paradoxical moment that is both death and birth.

Do we need a book of the dead?
Do we need a book of the living?
Could the book of the dead also be the book of the living?

This great book could show us the way into life within death, death within life. What wonders await us?

What perils?

Is there such a book? Is there a book of the living and of the dead, or should we leave the dead to the dead and seek a new way of living? A way of living that arises out of the death. Where is the way to move from this terrible moment where we are not dead yet we do not live, where we have perished, and have been birthed? Is there such a book to show us the way out of this terrible moment?

Read the rest of this entry »

She came ashore,
still glistening and wet
from the sea, shared her drink
and showed me symbols
of mysterious things
and stones and shells, she laughed
and I laughed
with her.

Not wanting her to leave,
I took her to my hearth.
She spoke, I could not understand,
when I spoke, she smiled,
but made no reply.

She drew lines in the earth
to show me her home,
from whence she came, across the sea,
she held her heart
open for me.

We sat together deep into the night,
but weary from her journey,
her songs faded, and now
in a cloud of stars
she sleeps,

and while she sleeps,
I tend our hearth.