Body Revelations

Today I woke seeing

not with my eyes,

but seeing the world

through the heart.

The location of things

seemed to drop

from my brain

and was peering

out from my chest.

My forehead unwrinkled

its long years of worry;

my throat released

all of its grip;

and now there's a breath

that fills my whole being,

a breath so open and free

that instead of stopping

at the top of my lungs,

it pirouettes in the heavens above

and swirls inside middle earth.

And here in this body,

this small human body,

that's always and only 

belonged to God,

the secret of deep

abidance in peace seems

to be to live from the heart;

for the mind of the brain

seems to want some gain,

but the mind of the heart stays clear.

Who would ever believe 

that this very body,

the one I spent years to transcend,

would turn out to be

Truth's continual key

to abide as the One I am?

And who could imagine

it's possible to see,

not through eyes,

but the heart's pure intimacy?

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Long Before We Ever Tried

To meditate is

to realize what has

always been meditating,

the vast and empty sky

in which the 

clouds of meditating

and not meditating

appear and

then disappear.

To meditate is to

realize this sky

that kissed the

clouds long before

we ever tried

to love what is.

John Astin

Photo:  Peter Bowers

What Can I Say

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is the face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the

chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you 

were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy four,

and the leaf is singing still.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

Ever Arriving

"At the still point of the turning world...

there the dance is...

Except for the point, the still point,

there would be no dance,

and there is only the dance."

T.S. Eliot 

I think of it

as the Swirling Radiance,

movement that never ceases,

ever arriving

from the last moment 

of eternity,

the plundered second

of all that will ever be.

And you, here,

are at the midpoint,

the demarcation

of what has always been

and what is perpetually approaching,

your seeing is that which sustains,

carries forth,

enables.

You are the perpetual 

witness,

heaven's link to time.

If you listen, you can 

almost hear it swish 

as it goes by.

Dorothy Walters.

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Journey of Return

When the Beloved wants to take you Home, 

extend your hand to His welcoming

even though your body may be trembling

and your mind may want to flee;

even though those around you grieve,

and you yourself have mourned, even before they,

the changing form of your body.

Tears are not the final truth

though they will come and go

like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.

Death is not a failure of a mind

that is not strong enough,

or positive enough, or pure enough.

Those who hold such views are simply

masking fear with ideas of being in control

We are being lived by the Creator of this life.

Do you really think a finite mind can change

the mind of God?  Jesus tried and failed.

"Please take this cup from me!" he begged,

as we all do in the midst of anguish.

But anguish, fear, or deepest grief

cannot alter Who you really are.

The beautiful Spirit that extended Itself

in space and time, and called Itself by your name,

is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,

to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,

that kisses you at birth,

and holds your hand in death,

and never for a moment

forgets you are Itself.

The mind imagines you are leaving,

but where could you truly go?

You are Life Itself!  Unceasingly flowing,

moment to moment unfolding Yourself.

A body is born; a body dies; but you do not. 

Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.

Rest there.  Rest in the knowing that

opens your heart to all that IS,

that loves Itself in all that comes,

and returns to Itself in all that goes. 

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Marriage

To see your face

with the eye of emptiness

is to have your face

as my own, and to find

between seeing and loving

not even a hairbreadth.

Colin Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers