I walked twice today. Once because that’s what I do (it was chilly and dark and stormy) and twice because just after 1 p.m. the rain cleared and it was warm and sunny and sometimes one longs not for the hermitage but for the glorious light of God itself and seeing it right there, steps into it. Why not?
Chickadees and crows watched the dog and I go, singing a warning to those for whom two-feet and canines almost always mean danger. The trails were muddy and slick, still running with rain, and I slipped and fell more than once. The dog kept looking back as if to be sure I was okay. She is not used to unsteadiness in our walking. Nor am I really, but I am getting better at remembering to laugh.
As we went, I thought about inner peace – a phrase that has been echoing and reechoing in my mind lately, alternately annoying and delightful. Annoying because I used those words cheaply for far too long – long after I knew better – and delightful because there are no consequences and so it doesn’t matter if I used them cheaply or not. When we are ready to accept God, God is there – peace is there – and what went before is let go because it no longer serves. It is so simple and so liberating and so beautiful.
We truly are talking about a decision – a brief fold of the mind in the direction of love, or water assuming the shape of the doe’s print into which it falls. And we make it – we leap into the light like energetic monks, like love returning to love – and then . . . we fall back, slowly or quickly. It’s because we’re trying to fly on our own merit, not realizing that the sky was given to us in Creation, and we are already there. We are wings and sky and that mind that holds them both.
And yet how slowly we learn! And yet how lovely and spacious and embracing the world in which we learn! As if our happiness really were God’s will, and the chickadees and the rivers and the the pine trees God’s chorus, singing us the way home, one stumbling step after another.
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Inner peace, yes:) It is revealed in time. Leaves fall off naturally, when the season comes… How life is beautiful and abundant because of different seasons of our being:)
Love your videos Sean!
April was a fruitfull month ( “.. stirring dull roots with spring rain”:)), you wrote so many wonderful insights from your inner*outer walks. I loved your thoughts about how all God’s children are equal in their abundance and there is no need for competition. It is so important in our everyday life (and struggle of mind). Or your video about always waking up early because of wanting to meet with God in certain time/space. It is love:) In this world we have time and space, and there is no reason not to love its boundaries:)
Every time I read one of your articles, I am amazed and thankful for the beauty of your insight. Truly, I always receive so much Beauty and feel in my heart Light we share:) Thank you*
Thank you, Zrinka. You are too kind. We go where we sense God is – or can be sensed – and come back singing (or mumbling, as the case may be).
. . . I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
And yet what else is there to do?
I am waiting on my beloved bluets to show their blurred amethyst faces in the tangled grass of the sideyard – like moonlight, like the dream of moonlight, like the mind in which the dream of moonlight elides – I am wondering where they are when I only yearn for them – and then in that attentiveness (a form of wonder, a form of love) one slips briefly into the love the bluets both are and inspire and sense for a moment how thin the veil is – the violet hour – between what is material and what is simply Love, Light, such a gentle and undulating flux, composing us all, allowing us to compose in turn . . .
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
I think we are like that, home to the wind, the bluets, one another, and so wordy & lovely all at once . . .
Love Light gentle composing flux 🙂
There is so much rain in the land; Rain, Holy Grail and Swans often come to my mind these days. I don’t know what is the right question, especially when I am looking into the heart of light, the silence. Can *questions* exist in silence—– if so, then they are not observed, but — Felt — like gentle, soothing fluctuations in a Flux of (zero point) energy:) felt by Heart, not by mind. Does Heart filled with love ever ask for one thing…
Each time a question rises from silence, a Dream is in making:) This beautiful dream. Perhaps there are quest*ions only in dreams, and in Violet hour (and right before Dawn:)), we see through the question, through our deep blue dream…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbArUJBRRJ0
ps. what an amazing title/idea of Leonard Bernstein’s fourth lecture in his “The Unanswered Question” series- title is The Delights & Dangers of Ambiguity
Love and flowers to you and your loved ones***
What a complex piece . . .
The first time the trumpet speaks I recoil: the question interrupts the “almost pulseless” beauty, the lovely expression of silence. Recoil: cry.
Want is always the interruption of perfection – what question does not emerge from a perception, however dim or inarticulate, of lack?
And yet how hard we try, all of us, first tentatively, with increasing intensity, ascending to cacophany, to raise the question up, to have answers answers, to pursue and construct and memorialize them.
All so that in the end one is grateful to return to the question and let it go unanswered – the last iteration of the trumpet perceived as a relief somehow . . .
For what remains after hearing – what echoes where echoes are – are the strings, which are the ground, the what-is.
What would it be to not want? To not question?
I ask: I want to be answered: what is outside perception? What remains – or moves forward – or simply is – after one lays aside language and image – will we reach the grail when it is no longer the grail?
I remember swans in a little cove near the sea, coming together around the rocky turn, and my heart stopped – elegance stops the heart – and so briefly touched the silence/stillness that waits, pulseless, lovelily, endlessly offering . . .
They left, the swans, and I could not find the cove again now even with a map, and yet I have not forgotten them, and now you bring them back to me, and it is like they were there all along . . .
When rain falls into the pond it is water returning to water but there is also the ripple – sweet circles enlarging and echoing – such brief interruptions of the still surface – the green depths.
Perhaps we are like that – all of us – questioning, yearning, answerless despite our wordiness – brief patterns witnessing the return of love to Love.
You know language and images but you also – equally well- know what is aside language and images. You experience it. We all do. There is no explanation of what is aside language and images because each of us – knows it- has it,- does it. We know it better than we can explain it, we understand *SilencePeaceJoy* quite well, but undermine our understanding and our innocence, thinking we got it wrong, thinking there is something more to it, questioning our beauty and lightness. Every day, each of us has moments of inner silence and joy, no matter how little or few:) There will be more of this in time. That, what is aside symbols and language, can be poetically described as “almost pulseless” beauty, the lovely expression of silence:) “Almost pulseless” because it seems there is always some (little) (potential) movement, little waves on the sea ∼∼∼ So even this Stilness is not completely “still”, but “still” enough to be considered zero point energy. The big question will inevitably rise, big waves created on the sea. The biggest one of all will be screaming – The Perennial Question of Existence (Kant’s and ours – Who am I? What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?). This question rises so high from the surface of the sea (rising vigorously/desperately toward its perception of heaven), that it forgets where it came from. As you said… *how hard we try, all of us, first tentatively, with increasing intensity, ascending to cacophany, to raise the question up, to have answers answers, to pursue and construct and memorialize them.* After a while we get tired and – experienced. Our mind is full. We yearn relief, It is time for our Hearts to be full again. So the wave begins to return to the ground, having more silence and less questions. It is natural. We are both Silence and Question, both Heart and Mind. Heart always sings in silence, mind always questions. Questioning is equally part of Life, of being Alive. Questioning our possibility to exist simultaneously as ALL that we are (silence and question, heart and mind) and ultimately discovering the best way to do it, that is – our way, our balance, our symphony:). Sound of the strings (Silence of the Druids) echoes simultaneously with the trumpet (The Perennial Question of Existence) and woodwind quartet (Fighting Answerers)… Is – that –Life ? A sound? Sound*Music that can be more or less “harmonius”? (What will my Life sound like? (my mind asks lovingly:))? Let it be beautiful. I like the fact that the strings always play, they never stop, they are the ground, the melody, they are – Heart. It does feel true to my heart that the Strings are the ground, that what – is. Ocean. Everything else comes and goes, like waves on sea.
I believe that the Question indeed emerges from perception of lack,- from feeling of not having a solid – ground, from Fear of Unknown way of being. If you imagine that the Question is a big wave in the middle of the ocean, you will see how confused he is. He is Of the Ocean, but can he really understand it? Can he see himself and his position, his relation to others? He feels so different, seemingly separated for unknown reason, and that makes him afraid. It is no wonder his strange existence perplexes him. He feels/fears his existence (as a wave) is temporary, relative and fragile (and he is right, for he will be ocean again), and wonders what is it all for. Why did he happen? What will happen to him? What is the meaning of him and everything else? He doesn’t understand his relation to the ocean or the sky.
„will we reach the grail when it is no longer the grail?“ The question of grail is question of origin. I think that at one point in time we will realize that the very question of grail – ∼ Served -(and serves) ∼ us (the grail) to find the way back to the grail (home, ourselves). Whenever there is no question of the grail (in mind), there is increasing – experience – of the grail. Followed by mind’s joyfull realization that there is nothing to reach (we are home! and then few hours later again the questions rises: Where am I? What am I doing here? I still know nothing). Do questions ever cease? I don’t know. But what I do know or feel, is that Silence never stops, it plays forever like beloved guitar. That is why we are always home.
Swans, druids, rain, knights, ponds,… there is something Celtic in the air this spring:) Love it! Swans were here all along 🙂
I really only have gratitude in response to this, Zrinka . . . It is clear and lovely and helpful . . . and also, I am sorry I cannot read you in Croatian . . . Maybe I will learn . . . Thank you so much for being here . . .
~ Sean
🙂