Poetry Wednesday: Pruning

It won't be long

before a storm will prune

what is ready to let go.

It will be clean and swift

Be your own storm

~

gunilla norris

~

A Mystic Garden

Poetry Wednesday

Poetry Wednesday: Listening...

I've been busy lately; moving, rushing, doing. My mind, too; racing, contemplating, creating. But stillness has been illusive...

Listening

Somehow, I must sit to listen.
Standing implies the readiness for action,
for the executing of the will.
To hear You I must sit down and calm down.

The magpie mind chatters.
It doesn't know about stopping.
How helpless I feel in its automatic firing,
its busy babbling. It is impossible to hear You
as long as I am full of sound.
I turn this helpless prayer toward You.
Help me to be quiet, to sit here
...slowly unknowing everything,
becoming dark, becoming yielding...
just sitting.

Here, without will, let me become willing.
Here, without concepts, help me to know.
Here, without doing, turn me toward usefulness.
Let my heart find its ears in You.
Let the countless cells of my body
open in order to listen,
Let my being come into Your presence
and experience the sound of Your light.
~Gunilla Norris~

Poetry Wednesday

Just-Before-Spring Seasons

February. For the past few years of my life, February has been a month of impending dread. A dark, cold, long month; a month doomed by my psyche as lonely; an end of winter, how-will-I- ever-survive-until-Spring month. February. I could go into a myriad of reasons of how February has deserved this dismal relegation in my eyes, but we all have our seasons and I have grown to believe that even Februaries are sometimes needful and healing to the growing soul. So this quiet, painful Just Before Spring is my February--the one I've embraced.

Gunilla Norris puts it so beautifully in her book, Mystic Garden: "Everything is dormant in the cold. My spirit, too is spilled and scattered. I seem to be at a standstill...Benumbed, we may wonder if perhaps it is in quietude, in seeming deep freeze, that God enters our depth without interference? Below the ever-tracking mind, can we sense, trust, or feel the soul being led? Could we learn to simply accept this, to allow it?"

Now I'm searching for those redeemable moments:

I had an amazing opportunity during February to visit my family in Kansas--my family a thousand miles away. It was a once in a lifetime surprise visit that I will never forget. I came back from that trip haunted by a deliciously heart-rending word--submerged--and picturing a dear one's hands lifted, one slightly more elevated--two uneven plains of existence; to me a sudden sadness, a quick word of correction, of wall-raising. But then a realization that every instance in life has a bit of truth to offer--a lesson to level. And my soul said, 'yes'.

I layed in my bed that night picturing myself perched in the lower hand; my mind bucked at the thought and pushed it away, not wanting to accept this perception. But my soul said 'yes' to the moment; to the element of truth. And when I placed myself in the lifted hand, I realized that I was the one standing at the edge of a cliff, gazing sometimes at the water below, but mostly distracted by the whirlwind around me.

How do we submerge ourselves in Spirit? How do we live in that Divine awareness? I know the truth is simple. The practice can be elusive. This is why I come back to these four lines by Gunilla Norris in her book, Being Home:

First thought--as in 'first light'--

let me be aware that I waken in You

Before I even think that I am in my bed,

let me think that I am in You.

Presence and Awareness--knowing simply that the Divine is not barred from the cliffs we stand on, not confined to the water below, but permeates all. It is my awareness that becomes dull, distracted by life rather than submerged in Life. Recognizing Divine Presence in every moment, every simple daily act--this is the choice to be submerged in a presence we can never escape.

How has art moved you?

Why do we ask, “What is the way?”
For there are as many ways
as there are stars in the firmament. ~Gunilla Norris

A few days ago I opened a new book by Gunilla Norris, Simple Ways Towards the Sacred. I was stilled by these first words and found myself repeating them in slow, hushed breaths. How can words, in an unsuspecting instant, reach in and grip your core? And why did these words hold such sway in me? I felt melted and poured into those firmamental stars, spread over a thousand light-years. How can it be? The depths of human sentiment... how art does move us, does stir us, connect us.

Art is the essence
of human soul
laid bare
in longing
for....

How would you finish this statement?

How has art moved you? Have you ever had a moment like this either creating art or experiencing someone else's artwork?

I would love to read your thoughts.

Awakening

First thought--as in "first light"--

let me be aware that I awaken in You.

Before I even think that I am in my bed,

let me think that I am in You.



Eyes crusted over,mouth dry,

my creature self feels so inert and dumb.

Let me be aware that these words

searching toward You into consciousness

are also coming from You.



You are waking me out of this sleepiness

into awareness that my life, my thoughts,

my body, my tasks, my loves, passions,

and sorrows are gifts from You,

to be discovered and received this day.



Each hour wake me further to find You.

Let me relish in You, exult in You,

play in You, be faithful in You.

Let me be wholly present

to living the gift of time.

Help me to feel that tremendous, unrelenting joy

which is Your constancy

and which will not let any of us go.

Wake me to You.


~Gunilla Norris, in her brilliantly contemplative book, Being Home