Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Thinking of those cherubims with sleepless eyes... of the Lord, standing amidst us, in flesh and blood. Just look up the text. 


M. 

Things are not what they seem (a riddle)

A husband who thinks he is a husband

but is not

A man who thinks he is being treated as a child

but is not

by a woman who thinks she is being dismissed as a child

but is not 

by a lover who thinks he is not a lover

but is. 

All characters are fictional... of course...  How many of them, by the way:)? 

Adam Lay Y-Bounden (re-take by Richard)

This is silly but I enjoyed it - written quickly merely as an exercise for my Japanese student so he can practise saying his 'a' sounds which he isn't very good at.

Adam ate the apple down

The apple given whole

It was the apple Eve gave him

The apple that she stole

And when he ate the apple whole

He was in agony

Because the apple he was giv’n

Was from a curséd tree

Adam had an aptitude

To feel the world aright

But now he had an attitude

That made his life a blight

Before his eating of the fruit

His way was straight and clear

But now the blighted tree he saw

Confused his heart with fear

The angles in his path ahead

He now saw with dismay

Would be his lot till Kingdom come

Until that happy day

A tree of knowledge seems so fine

Its fruit to be desired

But we must beware of that

Which leaves us mad and tired

Merton on 'The General Dance'

On this wild early Winter's day the trees around my ears are indeed dancing, and perhaps a bit more than they would find comfortable as blasts from the Antarctic do their best to strip the euclypt leaves from their branches. Here is Merton on the dance more harmonious:

"...the Lord plays and diverts himself in the garden of his creation, and if we could let go of our obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear his call and follow him in his mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash -- at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyse them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness,absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance that is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Happy dancing! Will you join me in a reel?

Trees, where you sit (Solmet)

There was a tiny moment, in the company of these pine-trees, when I knew that the same life was rushing through our bodies, the same wind was blowing in their branches and in my soul; that their sturdy rootedness and their gentle swaying are what I am; that they share my pain and my bewilderment, my perplexity and my determination to be rooted in the Real. This is what "here and now" is to me: a communion of all living things, in God. 

Their tops in the clouds, their branches are stout, 

And thin, tall and proud they're swaying about;

     Of sunlight and rain

     They're talking again 

Allowed to spell them aloud 

Richard Lewis, Tenor - Where'er You Walk (from 'Semele' by G.F. Handel)

The here and now in the raindrops

And so, even today when the last attempt to prolong the mild Autumn finally fails and the heart is driven inside, I glanced across the dreary damp scene as I rode past. Nothing more empty than a wind- and rain-swept car park: unpeopled and denatured. And it connected with past emptiness and past nothingness. But stealing sideways glances, I caught a row of waterdrops, hanging from metal - a sideways, waterdrop view of the world - and thought that yes, this is reality too, this is now and nowhere else, this is not even the past I think I am connecting with. And that, amazingly and counter-intuitively, God is in this too, hanging there in the raindrops. I didn't smile and I wasn't happy, but I was really there and determined to be there, as I am determined to be here, listening to the winter raining in and knowing that I am more connected to you and all that I love in being connected to now and here, even when my past tells me it feels like absence.