Sail Away Sweet Sister

This is all about God, prayer, community, music, art, poetry, theology, love and all sorts of things people run into on their life journey, especially when the second half of life is looming ahead. It is inspired by Fr Richard Rohr, by the Contemplative Outreach of Fr Thomas Keating, by C.G. Jung, by C.S. Lewis, Alan Watts, St Beuno's retreat house and all the communities I have a privilege to belong to. It is dedicated to and I hope will be used by my nearest and dearest, scattered all over the planet, and who are falling upwards with me.

Tuesday 1 January 2013

A new year, apart, shared


A new year, apart, shared

Hot rain searing part-closed eyelids
Shadows hiding in dark long grass
 
Snakes coil on pathways in moonlight

Unravelling to meet the bells’ joyous swing


The fantastic and the real worlds enmesh
And time loses touch with itself and sleeps,

Elastic, enfolded, in reverie

 

The revellers, unexpectedly released,
Touch cells across the gap

Laugh amazement
And fix the memory

Knowing that all the debris drops away,
Leaving the essence

Entire, entwined, in the eyes of the heart

 

(New Year’s Day, 2013)
(So THAT is what happened, along with the journalling, reading, and feeding of other people's possums. I never did get to the gardening.)

New Year's Message from Richard, via Rohr

Here is something to help me, and you too I hope, grow in mutual esteem in 2013 (actually, it HAS to include you, as I cannot grow in esteem mutually on my own). I read it a while back and it keeps coming back to me, demanding attention. I think this must mean that it is significant:

BRIDGE BUILDING
Somewhere on our journey we stop trying to explain reality and instead to deeply experience it. This puts us in touch with feelings that we would change our lives for, such as desire, compassion, anger, friendship, loyalty, and love. Such feelings come out of the great unconscious, but they are still largely hidden and confused, and often scary.
We can't risk invading this unconscious land until we've developed a clear sense of identity, an appropriate sense of our own and others' boundaries, and some sense of order and control. This is the task of the first half of life.
Like a bridge across the river between the unconscious and the conscious, our soul mediates and carries the images from one realm to the other. The soul also mediates between the body and the spirit, and builds a bridge to the other side so the conscious and the unconscious can walk back and forth. This is soul work. Opening up this bridge is the task of the second half of life. (On the Threshold of Transformation, Day 130, p. 136)