Instrument of Peace by the Canadian Tenors

River Time

Have you also learned that secret

from the river; that there is

no such thing as time?

That the river is everywhere at the

same time, at the source and at

the mouth, at the waterfall, at the

ferry, at the current, in the ocean

and in the mountains, everywhere

and that the present moment only exists for

it, not the shadow of the past nor

the shadow of the future?

Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Strange

The little river twittering in the twilight, 

The wan, wandering look of the pale sky, 

this is almost bliss.  

And everything shut up and gone to sleep, 

all the troubles and anxieties and pain

gone under the twilight. 

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the 

river.

That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here; 

I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight, 

It is large, so large, I could not see it before, 

Because of the little lights and flickers and

interruptions, 

Troubles, anxieties and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer, 

You are the wish,  and I am the fulfillment, 

You are the night, and I am the day.

What else - it is perfect enough.

It is perfectly complete, 

You and I, 

What more-- ?

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.

D.H. Lawrence

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Love Frees

All day long a little burro labours, sometimes 

with heavy loads on her back and sometimes

just with worries

about things that bother only

burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more

exhausting

than physical labour.

Once in a while a kind monk comes

to her stable and brings

a  pear, but more 

than that, 

he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her

ears 

and for a few seconds the burro is free

and even seems to laugh, 

because love does 

that.

Love frees.

Meister Eckhart

I wish I could speak like music

I wish I could speak like music.  I wish I could put

the swaying splendor of fields into words so that

you could hold Truth against your body and dance.

I am trying the best I can with this crude brush, 

the tongue, to cover you with light.  I wish I could

speak like divine music.  I want to give you the

sublime rhythms of this earth and sky's limbs

as they joyously spin and surrender, surrender

against God's luminous breath.  Hafiz wants you

to hold me against your precious body and dance, 

dance.

Hafiz

And What is Time?

And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time: 

And he answered:  

You would measure time the measure-

less and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even

direct the course of your spirit according to

hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon 

whose bank you would sit and watch its

flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's 

timelessness.

And knows that yesterday is but today's

memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contem-

plates in you is still dwelling within the 

bounds of that first moment which scat-

tered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his

power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, 

though boundless, encompassed within the

centre of his being, and moving not from 

love thought to love thought, nor from 

love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided

and spaceless? 

Kahlil Gibran

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.





Mary Oliver