The Soul and The Sea

 As if summoned by seagulls, we come back to the beach 

where we can cast of the shoes and our everyday cares

tell time by the tides and live in the moment 

Our search for shells an echo of childhood

and the surf's refrain is music remembered 

-       -  author unknown

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

  - W. H. Auden

Everything dies, baby that's a fact

But maybe everything that dies some day comes back.
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic city.

   

                         - Bruce Spingsteen

_____________________________

The Soul and The Sea

What is this attraction of the sand and the sea?

The gulls gliding the beach while sandpipers

Chase the waves, in and out

And the soft sweet wind blown breath of the divine

Carries the sacred incensed salt air

Serving as a communal mystical magnet 

Of solace and solitude.

Is it that upon the birth of the light of day

And the darkness of night

The master artist thought is best 

To make the Sky complimented by Sea

That is a measure of the ocean’s significance

In the scheme of everything?

Scientists discern that the human hymn to water

Can be found in rising of dopamine

And the effects of negative ions

And multiple almost unexplainable

Interactions on one’s senses and the brain .

There was that infamous expert 

Of the workings of the brain

Who surmised that we admire and are touched

By in the miraculous around us is because

The source of that beauty and serenity

Resides somehow deep within our own psyches.

(Reminding us that “Psyche” is the ancient Greek

Term for “ Soul.”) 

How wonderful it is then that the Divine Source

Of this magnificent sand and sea 

Considered that this place needed 

Humans to make it complete .

  -JF Sobecki

 ______________

"The sea does not reward those who are anxious, too greedy , or too impatient. To dig for treasures

shows notonly impatience and greed, but lack of faith, patience, patience, patience ,is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty,open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea."

 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From The Sea

The Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

- Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focused; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst. 

                  

                         - Elizabeth Bishop

At The Beach – Avett Brothers

 

https://youtu.be/pKFJ8V5CNJQ

Atlantic City – Bruce Sprignsteen

https://youtu.be/Y1pZjyJyAIQ

And welcome Bernie and Barb to Shore Life!

Amdg

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple”

        - Jack Kerouac

“The only truth is music”

       - Jack Kerouac

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

Resolver

                          

“You have no right to tie yourself in knots because you want to know the outcome of what you are doing. Don’t, no, no. Let it go. Let it go into history. Let it go into Christ. Let it go into generations. Let it go into the children. Play it and pray it well…. as (Dorothy) Day taught we may never see the good outcome of the good we do - that we must do it anyway".
 - D. Berrigan SJ

Sitting on the starting line of another year

There were a couple of basic questions yet unresolved.

Journal and pen in hand the questions flowed to fill the virgin spaces between the lines.

Do we really believe that B.F. Skinner is the primary

student of the divine who disclosed

the secret to serenity and the purpose of life itself?

Is the intention of faith, religious practice and good works

All part of some insurance policy concerning the afterlife?

Do we believe that serving the poor refugee, the poorest of the poor and the sick are part of some social experiment that if we get it right we win two tickets to paradise?

Are we to love another and our children only if they love us in return or do we wait until they love us first before we return the love?

Is making ourselves great really a result of isolation and self-centeredness?

If the divine insisted on consistency and subscription to only one path to grace then why is all existence in the universe so diverse?

The questions suddenly ceased. Then silence  …. A long pause and the words on the pages evaporated. The mystic voices of Berrigan, Day and the poets whispered sweetly as he let it all go.

Simple isn’t it?

Keep it Simple - V. Morrison

https://youtu.be/nXXFKhyrq7w

Tomorrow Never Knows – Beatles

 

https://youtu.be/nNQIpUmTdXE

Soul of a Man – B. Cockburn

https://youtu.be/xUqFP3kGMZg

                                                

                                  Practical Reasons to Welcome Poetry into our lives

                                                                  ( Click link)

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-practical-reasons-to-welcome-poetry-into-our-lives

Where Many Rivers Meet

All the water below me came from above
All the clouds living in the mountains
gave it to the rivers
who gave it to the sea, which was their dying.

And so I float on cloud become water,
central sea surrounded by white mountains,
the water salt, once fresh,
cloud fall and stream rush, tree root and tide bank
leading to the rivers' mouths
and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea,
the stories buried in the mountains
give out into the sea
and the sea remembers
and sings back
from the depths
where nothing is forgotten.

David Whyte 2004

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

    - Mary Oliver

Wild geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

       - Mary Oliver

amdg

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple”

        - Jack Kerouac

“The only truth is music”

       - Jack Kerouac

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC