For some there comes a time when a second chance is given.That time then becomes a celebration of the unrecognized gifts of the past and humble gratitude for the wonder of present.
This then is a collection of reflections and comments on life,work,love and faith to be sung ,and danced to, in thanksgiving for a second chance.
Sometimes our narrow perspective taints
What we really see
Sometimes the ego surfaces and gets in the way
Of our continuing down the right path
Sometimes the reconnecting with spirits from the past
Affirm the grace of the original initial connection
Sometimes science is used to rationalize
That which needs to be left unexplainable
Sometimes we think we know God
We need to stop thinking and let go
Sometimes streams lead to rivers and rivers flow to the sea
We should join the leaves on the water and let ourselves drift and flow with the rivers
Sometimes some are blessed to realize that it is not too late
As our third act to the great play can help us make sense of all that went before
Sometimes completing that impossible climb up the mountain
The victory was not just for those we name but for our very own soul.
Sometimes it takes the grace of pure smiling innocence of an infant
to sanctify the universe's eternal spark within our own authentic spirit
Sometimes our own lack of wisdom is evidenced by insufficient words
And we need a poem, a song or a moment in nature to understand
"When it's over, I want to say:all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
- Mary Oliver
Finisterre : The Place Where
Your Present Turns Into the Future
(Written and inspired by the "Farm" in Upper Marlboro, MD and the works of David Whyte)
“ Think
about how many times I have fallin
Spirits
are using me
Larger
Voices are Callin’ ”
- Stephen Stills
"The Logic of worldly success rests on the fallacy: The strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at least be real" - Seven Storey Mountain, T. Merton "This is another great difference between your civilization and ours. You admire the man who pushes his way to the top in any walk of life, while we admire the man who abandons his ego" - Seven Years in Tibet, H. Harrier
My Camino There was that time while on his Self selected Camino The Pilgrim awakened To the reality his conversation To the journey that brought him to this moment What he had desired had already happened Each step along the way of his sojourn Was the result of one invitation leading to another The great Marathon is both voyage to where he thought He should be in the end An the expedition of the Seven Stories of the interior. At one mystical moment the colors glorify the mountains In September in the rain just before the leaves come falling down. Purpose,intention complete the trees as they rest in wait For the promise of their redemptive rebirth. Weary Pilgrim on that road less travelled. Scallop shells indicate it is how he got to this place that really matters. The reflections of his journaled confessions repeated Beginnings and Endings, Endings and Beginnings, Interactions and coincidental encounters. The Obe Wan had once counseled " Courage" His Jedi companion said "The Frontier Where reality lives is where the true self, the myths of the world And the future reside. Hearts break when we care about that which really matters." His Santiago another safe harbor On that perpetual voyage. Illuminations and transformation arrive When spirits let go. Paradise is ...now A river can't be pushed, It flows, flows and flows... This place on the shore of the great sea and this time is Where the pilgrim stands in revelation reflecting On that which was, is and receives another invitation. He walks on.
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.” Camino - David Whyte The way forward, the way between things, the way already walked before you, the path disappearing and re-appearing even as the ground gave way beneath you, the grief apparent only in the moment of forgetting, then the river, the mountain, the lifting song of the Sky Lark inviting you over the rain filled pass when your legs had given up, and after, it would be dusk and the half-lit villages in the evening light; other people's homes glimpsed through lighted windows and inside,othe people's lives; your own home you had left crowing your memory as you looked up to see a child playing or a mother moving from one side of a room to another, your eyes wet with the keen cold wind of Navarre. But your loss brought you here to walk under one name and one name only, and to find the guise under which all loss can live; along the wa, remember you were greeted as such, and you needed no other name, other people seemed to know you even before you gave up being a shadow on the road and came into the light, even before you sat down with them, broke bread and drank wine, wiped the wind-tears from your eyes; pilgrim they called you again. Pilgrim.
Santiago
- David Whyte
The road seen, then not seen, the
hillside
hiding then revealing the way you
should take,
the road dropping away from you as if
leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you,
holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that
carried you
into your future, that brought you to
this place,
no matter that it sometimes took your
promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your
heart along the way:
the sense of having walked from far
inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked
yourself
for something that seemed to stand both
inside you
and far beyond you, that called you
back
to the only road in the end you could
follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and
speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe
arrival,
so that one day you realized that what
you wanted
had already happened long ago and in
the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you
had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on
and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to
find a way
than the gilded roofs of any
destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the
end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering
crowds,
and turning the corner at what you
thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple
reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face
looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all
in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had
sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that
beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still
stretching on.
