Saturday January 10.15
To the Drunken Muse:
No.
Leave, take your enticing cup of lies,
leave the room of this life,
close the door and go, do not return.
I want nothing to dull or dazzle
this beautiful mirror I’m given.
These reflections, perceptions
are to be keen with physical edge,
and with Spirit: from here I can see
in the low meadow there
the wild grass-blades, shining and sere
in lean winter sun, stirring slightly
with sharp curled knives of wind.
A Red-Shouldered Hawk is perched high
in the Black Walnut, folded and still, waiting
intently watching, for his very life.
Many autumns ago, far to the north:
I sit beside a deep, high-mountain lake
alone, long after midnight.
The yellow moon is glowing
above a jagged black forest of spruce.
The golden light reflects perfectly,
silently, on the black windless water.
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–Quilla
Epiphany…..February 10.14…….(revisited 2.20.14)
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Epiphany/Redemption
(for Joan)
Those long-gifted with the radiance of joy—
we expect them to speak, but only words
sweetened with the countenance of hope.
How we love keeping souls
both good and bad, imprisoned:
stay there in the cell where you belong!
But we are called to steal the jailer’s keys
and set all prisoners free!
She herself is finally unchained, unafraid
and cares enough to follow her Lantern down
the dark stairs of love, among cool cellars
and tombs, and brings up the cold shadow-relics
carefully hidden there in buried rooms
and shows them to herself, to us at last —
—see, how the sunlight burns them
of spiders, time and dust, and turns them, glorious
white sea-birds soaring with windblown joy!
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–Quilla
December 29.13
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Thoughts Late in the Year
Congested with illness, I sit outside.
Mild winter sunlight warms a tired face.
Weary with weakness, I deeply breathe
the fresh December air.
The chill night shadows of dis-ease
tighten my lungs,
leave a painful slowness in my bones.
Our dear ones came to be with us a few days
and now are gone back again to their lives
very far away.
We near the end of yet another year, recalling
joy-filled faces of light, spoken words
of healing love.
Soft winds sigh, and sigh the tall dark pines.
The fountain splashes, sparkles breaking ice.
A few white clouds left from rain in the night
drift across the deep blue Mind of love.
As always, crows are arguing about something,
sounding like television, or politicians.
Harsh crow-words shatter the winter quiet
like shards of a holy vase—dropped, or care-lessly
tossed, forever broken.
On a bare winter twig, a Whitethroat Sparrow rings
his tiny bell—a few notes inexpressibly sweet
with hope, ineffably true—given freely
in the blue December light.
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–Quilla
Looking Within…
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“Oh, my dear friend, look not outward—at what stands in your way; what if it looks dreadful as a lion? Is not the LORD stronger than the mountains of prey?
But look inward—where the law of life is written on your very heart. This is where the will of the LORD is revealed, that you may know what is the LORD’s will concerning you.”
–Isaac Penington (1617-1679)—from Daily Strength for Daily Needs, 11.23
“I have directed you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in upright paths. My son, my daughter, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your sight; keep them in the midst of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their body. Therefore, watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put devious speech far from you. Let your eyes look directly ahead, and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. Watch the path of your feet, and all your ways will be established. Do not turn to the right or to the left; turn your foot from evil. –Proverbs 4: 11, 20-27
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Dear friends, I urge you—take courage, and enter the shadows of your own private heart, your most secret place, humble yourself, and you will find a great Light burning there: it is the LORD of Life, the LORD of Love, shining into your darkest shadows, to heal you with His perfect redeeming love, and to give you hope. You may surely place your faith, your hope, in Him. His enduring mercy and forgiveness for you is far deeper than all your sin. Return to Him. Cast ALL your care upon Him, for He knows you, and loves you with a perfect Love.
–Quilla
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Mushrooms and Glow-worms
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Mushrooms and Glow-worms:
This post appeared in a modified form in the Asheville/Hendersonville/Weaverville Tribune newspapers. It is dedicated with a father’s love to my daughter Farrah, who encouraged me to start this web-log, five years ago this week, September 2008, over 670 posts ago…. I thank you, Farrah, with more than words can express.
From my nature journal: Early, these September mornings, I sit outside reading a few passages from the timeless scriptures and meditate on them, sipping black tea and listening, always listening. The wondrous dark created earth wakens slowly, with faces of radiance, silent phrases of spoken light. Night dew glistens everything, minuscule globes and silver beads. Already a few yellow leaves are drifting down. Trees drip, the stillness of thick mists. Like wisps of smoke they slowly lift over the treetops and break apart into silver threads, unfolding fabric of the coming day.
A few moments, we catch glimpses of the perfectly round, pure white form of the nearest star—source of all this luminescence. These dazzling spectra of watery prisms paint every shape and shadow we can see. How easy it was for earlier cultures to make a god of the sun! Such broken spangles and floating motes of morning mist and radiance—these ask for nothing less than praise, inviting our humble and thankful entrance into the mansion of the new, unlived day. Yes, through all this lavish giving and freshness of morning lights, One does call us each personally to Himself: we did not create ourselves. Pause, and think about what that means. We are created beings, emerging from black oblivion into sunlit flowers and falling leaves . We are not our own.
We do not commonly think of the universe as infinite—timeless black spaces, forever. Far beyond the black night “ceiling”, silent realms of glory spin glittering outward, beyond our largest telescopes and our small comprehension. Somehow we’ve decided we can handle just one day of it—a twenty-four hour rotation on our planet’s axis—one night, one day’s light. So much simpler for us to contrive, to think of infinity in small pieces, so we have some definable dimensions to work and play with, some illusive measure of control. In such a small, artificial gridwork of minutes, hours, days and years we’ve come to “think, and move, and have our being”. As if there were no infinite inexpressible beauty, no God—-watching, asking, wanting to enter our day in real and very personal ways, to live His Life of self-giving Love through us. These little miracles of transcendence happen in the smallest gestures, facial expressions, in patient silences and with words, even as we watch our wrinkled hands tremble and our best words falter, as we see the leaves going again from green to gold.
Late nights and pre-dawns, we already hear vast tides of birds chirping to each other, flying down from the north, navigating across the seas of darkness over the land, ahead of the coming cold. Early and late, Canada Geese pass by, wildly honking over the trees, following the big river upstream, southward. The great mysterious cycles of wild design keep revolving above, beneath and beyond us, interlocking wheels of cosmic clocks. The cool morning grass ticks and sings wild praises of crickets, making beautiful little life-music…. Soon the frost will take them, numbing their tiny knees. For seven months the grasses will be silent again. Black curtains drape the windows of inexorably long nights.
So the planet imperceptibly turns, and keeps it blue-green turning, now leaving the burning days of August for softer topaz lights and freshening breezes. The very word September holds in the falling steps of its three-tone rhythm—in those descending syllables rhyming with ‘remember’— something of our youthful years, early glory illuminating the later wisdom of shadows. Cooler days and longer nights return with the richness of reflections . . .
We enjoy the scene on the new calendar page, but some ancient timepiece in us doesn’t need a calendar. In our very bones, in our eternal spirit we feel another summer going. This sort of knowing—both sensual and spiritual—brings to us a stirring mixture of exhilaration at the refreshing breezes, but also a sharp sense of melancholy, as another season of flowers falls to the ground.
Even the clouds are changing form and pattern, from tall hot cumulonimbus thunder towers, to these deepening shades of wolf-grey weathers looming along the high dark ridgelines. Nothing in the turning of the whole natural year heightens our awareness of the transience of being, more than the approach of autumn. Everywhere now we see conclusive evidence indeed, that “to everything, there is a season” —the words of God have both the delicate fragrance of lilies in them, and the hard blue iron of ice. We walk daily embraced by the sister graces of love, and of truth.
Now comes the time of mushrooms. In this moist, temperate climate a wide variety of fungi emerge in the shadows on the forest floor, fruit growing out of rich black humus, old logs, rotting stumps. These strange fleshy organisms live on dead organic matter, recycling the energies of decay. ‘Toadstools’ are the stuff of storybooks, old forest myths, wild imaginings. Many of them are deadly poisonous. Some are delicious, even nourishing. But if you do not know them well, best leave them be, enjoying their unique forms and rich colors, wondering at them, as only children wonder….“Yes, Nanny! Daddy told me those big white ones are Amanitas, and we don’t even touch them, NO, NO, NO! ’cause they are poison, Nanny!”
Last evening after a brief shower, I went out to watch the clear stars sparkling through the breaking clouds. Instead, my eyes looked down, caught by a few miniature lights glimmering slowly, crawling yellow-green in the dark grass. It is the eerie luminescence of fall’s first glow-worms, wingless larvae of fireflies (Lampyridae), male and female finding each other and mating in the early summer darkness. Now these tiny ghost-lamps emerge, glowing several long seconds with a quiet glory in the quavering music of young Screech Owls. Oh, but these are a certain glimmering welcome to the night mysteries of autumn.
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Little girl at a street fair in Weaverville NC, September 2008
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–Quilla
It’s about your Wings . . . (This is for you)……(Revised)
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Enter softly, cautious
but expectant: open
the deeply echoing night-vaults
of your most secret heart.
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It is from these locked rooms
your very dreams and fears emerge.
Now let the ancient runes of truth
thrown from a tall white moon,
fall like candle beams, like words
across your stony path.
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Like storybook forests, voices
come alluring you with crumbs,
laughing and lurking—
innocent Gretel, and the witch.
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To which will you listen?
If you did not know: were not aware
or simply forgot: the Spirit
Who is holy, longs for you within
the shadows, the curve of light on things.
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He loves for you to love the love He’s given:
taste of warm bread, the songs of birds, soft wings
and wind, scent of autumn smoke,
the weathered handle in your hand.
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He waits for you: to exit your small room
by the Door that is not closed.
Outside, beyond your little walls,
He will carefully open
your long, white uplifting pinions
designed with perfect grace, for flight
as you open them to Him.
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But first, let His timeless Words—
those old lanterns, flickering brightly
before your faltering steps
along this rocky path of night—
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First, bow down, and let them speak
healing sentences
to your badly broken wings.
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You must let the radiance of holy words
like sunlit heavenly birds, translucent—
let them loose, let them enter
that guarded ravaged fortress,
your dark and tender heart.
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Let the ancient words of Truth
tear down the stones, like walls
or cairns, you’ve been piling up
against your truest Self.
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Real beauty is waiting for you: to awake
to rise, to speak certain wise words
restoring love, and faith, to yourself,
to others. But Listen:
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You will know as they are spoken,
they are Life for you, opened wide
and new, like wings, like gates of morning light,
shining rivers of mercy flowing out
for you, for everyone.
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–Quilla
“Abide in Me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself
unless it abides in the vine,
so neither can you, unless
you abide in Me.”
–John, chapter fifteen, verse four
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–Quilla
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Starlight and Rivercliffs
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Starlight and Rivercliffs
If a weathered autumn scrap of man
should ask: some lean scraps of beauty
or of truth, to feed his hungered soul
his mind, this cold and leaning light
of withered old November—
shortened days and longing shadows,
—what can he expect?
When his tender heart rattles
like a coiled snake, dry river rocks
and autumn’s seed-pods
all that’s gone awry: the world,
the nation, the Church, his loved ones
and his own dreams, what, pray tell
does he dare expect, of God?
Brilliant winter stars emerge
like far-flung words of grace, across
the universe, at dusk:
salt grains of light, fall each night
like diamonds of quiet praise,
sparkling the darkling river, ever.
Cold rapids are rushing full, and white.
Starlight crystals glimmer on the shoals—
—they sing a river’s frothy love
the long night, illumined lyrics of joy
to the tall black rivercliffs, breaking
breaking slowly, slowly down
to sand, the glittering peace
of starlight, stardust, sand.
This is just the way
love always has and will
come to us, forever.
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–Quilla
Missing. . . .(revised 10.4.12)
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Missing
We like to think we like ‘mystery’—
those clever conundrums, resolved
by pretty actors, fifty minutes on tv.
But true Mystery—sometimes God gives us
real and pain-filled drama,
scant and reticent clues.
We’re caused to stoop and crawl
our musty closets, face our blue mirrors
more deeply, perhaps find a trace
of something true among the rubble,
what’s been taken, lost.
But only precious clutter—
theater tickets, dried petals, empty shells
and dried seaweed, heartfelt cards
and messages left like footsteps in the sand.
The walls still hold the echoes of her voice.
Images on the refrigerator door
haunt us, twenty times a day.
They tell us nothing now.
The one we love has packed her things,
left her home, and gone.
We can not find her now: the one
who promised faithfulness and truth.
By her own choosing, a hard refusal
of those she loved, the words are gone
as summer flowers turn to autumn mist.
Still, those of us she left behind:
we’d like somehow to win the one we’ve lost,
replace the ravaged board of life, redeem
our broken pieces, pay what cost.
Yes. We’d like to think the force of wrong,
the Queen of Self, and her chosen pawn—
the easy lies She tells, so easily believed;
—that somehow She’s relented, given
a reprieve, let our dear one’s heart return;
that our earnest little pawns of prayer,
Love’s true words of searching light
with all the unseen might of faith
break through, depose the shadow Queen.
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–Quilla
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“We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers
and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world,
and against evil spirits in heavenly places.” —Ephesians 6: 12 (NLT)
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” –Romans 12: 21
Savoring (revised) ….for Stephan
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Constellations of dew drops, spider silk
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Autumn rose petals, ferns, lichens, granite
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Savoring
(for Stephan)
Inexpressibly sweet, this late September morning—
cool air still early with shadows,
shreds of night-mist linger, lifting from the land.
A well-worn shirt of many autumns, softly holds
this pulsing warmth of heart, and bones.
Steamed black tea from the Oolong Mountains
is pungent on a thirsting tongue.
Opening the leaves of thin pages, I relish
their crispness in my fingertips, wrinkled
fine white rustling papers—the ancient Book
tastes like rusted nails, like blood
the joy of holy wine. Slowly I drink
the long-aged words of wisdom’s love.
In soft autumn light, savoring deep flavors
of the sacred Mystery—it is Mercy,
stronger yet more delicate
than steeped mountain tea, longer
than seasoned centuries: forgiveness
given us, for some scant trace of faith.
This, at last, the weathered taste
of deathless Love.
Night’s thick dews glisten, cling
to withering petals, the autumn rose.
A faint breeze rushes through the birch.
Flakes of light and shadow
fall across the page.
Still, the truth of living Words
keeps whispering down the ages, yellow leaves
keep drifting, spinning down.
This time of year, everything seems falling
and undone, spinning round us
windy silks of thistle-down.
Yet the shapes of perfect Love remain:
the thorns and silk of truth,
soft flakes of shadow, hard blades of Light,
His living Words remain.
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–Quilla
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September thistle-blooms and thistle down
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“Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath.
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail”
–Isaiah 51: 6
“How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth”
–Psalm 119:103
“Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will never pass away”
–Jesus, Matthew 24: 35
April Fourth
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And So
Hone the keen edge of your spirit.
File it daily, long loving strokes
the living stone of Words.
Fierce warriors are grinning at you
beguiling you with lies, hiding shameless
in naked flowers of sunlight.
Only truth’s steel sees, and kills them.
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–Quilla
“Let the weak say: ‘I am strong
in the strength of the LORD’. ”
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February fifth
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Winter Moon
The last of the day’s fire
fades into purple mountains.
In the broken limbs of a tall dead oak
Venus sparkles, like the truth.
The full February moon rises
through thin clouds,
an opal glowing on dark cloth.
Soft halos brighten the coming night.
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–Quilla
November Twelfth
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Faces
Deep November.
Surrounded by darkening forests
the faces of pale fields rest now,
radiate the softer light.
In the same way
Rembrandt’s tender faces
gaze at us from deep shadow
with love, with sorrow, with truth.
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–Quilla
“In Him we move, and live, and have our being.
For we are his children.”
–Acts 17: vs 28
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Today the warm September wind
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Today, the Warm September Wind. . .
. . .went rustling high, large dry leaves
of withering oaks, talking
in rough whispers
far above the path I walked.
Their voices recalled the shuffling pages
of scripture—hosts of thirsting people
down the long centuries, turning
the sheets of thin dry paper
young and aging fingers, searching
book and chapter, verse and line, certain
quenching words of truth—
—Heads bowed like deer, each one drinks
those lucid pools of living water:
ancient fountains, flowing down
beyond the bite of time’s yellowed tooth,
above the rustling autumn wind.
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“As the deer pants for the water brooks
so my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” —Psalm 42: vs. 1-2
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Truth and Beauty, Science and Art. . .
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“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. ” –Luke 10:27
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“To love God ‘with all our heart’ is to know the spiritual passion of measureless gratitude for the loving-kindness of God, and devotion to His goodness;
“To love Him ‘with all our mind’ is to know the passion for Truth that drives Science, and the passion for Beauty that inspires the poet and the artist, when all truth and beauty are regarded as the self-revealings of God” . . .
–adapted from J.H. Thom, (pub. 1851)
From Daily Strength for Daily Needs
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Small things, moments, gestures. . .
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“Do not forget to do good, and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
–—Hebrews 13: v.16
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“For this is the message that you heard from the beginning: that we should love one another.” — First John 3: v. 11
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“Be useful where you live, that they may both want and wish your pleasing presence still. Find out men’s wants and will, and meet them there. All worldly joys are less than the one joy of doing kindnesses.”
—George Herbert (1593-1632)
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“Let the weakest, let the humblest remember that in his daily course he can, if he will, shed around him almost a heaven. Kind words, sympathizing attentions, watchfulness against wounding others’ sensitivities—these cost very little, but they are priceless in their value. Are they not the staple of our daily happiness? From hour to hour, from moment to moment, we are supported, blessed by small kindnesses, freely given”.
—from the writings of F.W. Robertson (1816-1853)
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 