Nature as teacher

Whether viewing the distant rotund shapes of the hill side casuarina trees first planted fifteen years ago, or, more closely in hand, the last plump ripe Black Russian tomato of this year’s garden, I cannot but feel overwhelmed by the succulent goodness present everywhere during these days of autumn.

When the sun moves lower in the sky and drops its soft light upon slightly pungent soil moist from a passing squall, who needs iPhones or iPads with 100 apps to feel connected to the world?

Everywhere I look there is something to download; to ground my well being and, thereby, allowing it to soar among the clouds. And it is all free. More than that, it is pure gold freely given.

This is where the sacred brush of Eros paints the landscape to feed our souls all the nourishment they need.

Dangle a tress from your disheveled curls
and you’ll evict the monks from their monasteries.

Ruzbihan Baqli — 12th century Sufi poet

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Impermanence plunges us into the depth of all Being. And so all forms of the present are not to be taken and bound in time, but held in a larger context of meaning in which we participate. I don’t mean this in a Christian sense (from which I ever more passionately distance myself) but in a sheer earthly, deep earthly, sacred earthly consciousness: that what we see here and now is to bring us into a wider — indeed, the very widest — dimension. Not in an afterlife whose shadow darkens the earth, but in a whole that is the whole.

Rilke

With only a hint of pink in its fallen petals, the perky lily blossoms of last week have, in the short period of a week, transformed themselves from the quality of “fragile fertility” into the more delicate appearance of “fragile beauty”. A potent reminder, as Rilke would write, of our “fearfully fragile” lives.

Being Ephemeral

Does Time, as it passes, really destroy?
It may rip the fortress from its rock;
but can this heart, that belongs to God,
be torn from [God] by circumstance?

Are we as fearfully fragile
as Fate would have us believe?
Can we ever be severed
from childhood’s deep promise?
Ah, the knowledge of impermanence
that haunts our days
is their very fragrance.

We in our striving think we should last forever,
but could we be used by the Divine
if we were not ephemeral?

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 27

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The Easter lily opens up in “sensuous” bloom.

Re-connecting to Earth requires more than just looking at lily and sensing beyond the shallow essence of “purity, innocence, virtue, hope and re-birth”. Instead, look deeply into the flower and see it for what it is: a place of delicate fertility.

Lightly brush up against it with your forehead, cheeks and neck.

Put your nose next to the stamen and pistil and and let the pollen tickle you while it decorates the end of your nose. All the while breath in it’s soft fragrance.

Now, you’re ready to have a Georgia O’Keeffe understanding of flower.

White Flower on Red Earth #1

The path to embodying the sacred requires the animal senses within your thinking humanness to be let free.

Arguments of the Wise

Books and reading
don’t make up
the Beloved’s path.

Reason doesn’t lead
to the Plain of Truth.

In the Land of Knowledge,
the arguments of the wise
are like well-worn pathways –
muddy trails
left behind
by wild beasts.

Husayn Mu’min Yazdi

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I was feeling a bit down a few days ago over unmet expectations so I decided the best thing to do, while down, was to really get down; “down and dirty”, in fact. I walked over to the veggie patch and squatted eye ball to “eye ball’ with the denizens of this green world: the unfolding and crumpling yellow squash, cucumber, pumpkin and watermelon blossoms and their many tendriled and broad leaves.

Whatever chthonic powers inhabited this bit of dirt, they soon kick started a surge of mood enhancing endorphins and I entered into a world of temporal, yet eternal cyclical life. And a calmness dropped down on me, around me.

I was reminded of Jung’s statement that when we are sometimes lost in the complexities of life and are looking for a way through things, things that look desperate and unanswerable, one must understand that The Way is ineffable.

“One cannot, one must not, betray it. One needs faith, courage, and no end of honesty and patience.”

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