Thomas Traherne (1636-1674)

 

 

Songs are thoughts, sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech no longer suffices. Man is moved just like the ice floe sailing here and there in the current. His thoughts are driven by a flowing force when he feels joy, when he feels fear, when he feels sorrow. Thoughts can wash over him like a flood, making his breath come in gasps and his heart throb. Something like an abatement in the weather will keep him thawed up. And then it will happen that we, who always think we are small, will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves–we get a new song.

 

–Orpingalik,  Netsilik Inuit

 

On Sunday, April 11th, our theme was MYSTIC POETRY & PROSE from Animist, Polytheist, Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian & Muslim mystics.

 

Todd Oleson read a poem by Emily Dickinson and two poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jude Russell read poems by Rilke, Roethke & Blake. Dave Duncan read a poem by Sylvia Plath, which reminded me of a passage from Hamlet. Martha Ragland read the opening of Tagore’s Gitanjali. Nick Eldredge read the lyrics to Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. I read poems by Staffords William & Kim, and Waxwings by Robert Francis. Here are some the poems: 

 

God made a little Gentian –

It tried – to be a Rose –

And failed – and all the Summer laughed –

But just before the Snows

 

There rose a Purple Creature –

That ravished all the Hill –

And Summer hid her Forehead –

And Mockery – was still –

 

The Frosts were her condition –

The Tyrian would not come

Until the North – invoke it –

Creator – Shall I – bloom?

 

–Emily Dickinson  (1830-1886)

*

 

A Better Resurrection

 

I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is like the falling leaf;

Jesus, quicken me.

 

–Sylvia Plath

*

 

Hamlet.  I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why it appears nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.  What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?  Man delights not me.  No, nor woman, neither. 

 

–Will Shakespeare

*

 

“Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen”

 

“I live my life in widening circles 

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

 

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?”

*

 

“Alles wird wieder gross sein und gewaltig”

 

“All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low,

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

 

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, amd in you and me.

 

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.”

 

(I have to add one more here, read and absorbed shortly after I had experienced my life changing ‘mystical experience,’ and was still in the deepest throes of LOVE) (I still love it) (Jude)

 

”Losch mir die Augen aus; ich kann dich sehen”

 

“Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you,

Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you,

And without feet I can make my way to you,

without a mouth I can swear your name.

 

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you

with my heart as a hand,

Stop my heart, and my brain will  start to beat,

And if you consume my brain with fire,

I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.”

 

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy,  1996

*

 

Gitanjali

 

I

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou poorest, and still there is room to fill.

 

–Rabrindranath Tagore

*

 

Into the Mystic

 

We were born before the wind

Also younger than the sun

Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic

Hark, now hear the sailors cry

Smell the sea and feel the sky

Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

 

And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home

And when the fog horn blows I want to hear it

I don’t have to fear it

 

And I want to rock your gypsy soul

Just like way back in the days of old

And magnificently we will flow into the mystic

 

When that fog horn blows you know I will be coming home

And when that fog horn whistle blows I got to hear it

I don’t have to fear it

 

And I want to rock your gypsy soul

Just like way back in the days of old

And together we will flow into the mystic

Come on girl…

 

Too late to stop now… 

 

–Van Morrison

*

 

Ask Me

 

 

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

 

 

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

 

 

–William Stafford  (1914-1993)

*

 

All My Relations

 

I want to thank all my relations

for this chance to be on Earth

in her time of flourishing; to thank

the First People of this place, the

Multnomah people, the Clackamas,

Molalla, Tualatin, and Chinook, to honor

their sovereignty in long and continuing

relation, still teaching us how we might

be here together; to thank my mother and father,

moon and sun, for setting me forth before

their own passing on; to thank my grandmother

who listened to me so eloquently I learned

to listen to my own heart and mind, to find

stories and songs there; to thank my family

and friends, and all the citizens and travelers

who study and work for deeper kinship

in this place, with one another, and with

all creatures, one Earth, visible, palpable,

fragile, intricate, resonant, in need of our

better stories. I want to thank you

who have gathered to receive what I have

carried here–in hope that something

I have may meet something you need,

so all our relations may be strengthened

for the life we live together.

 

–Kim Stafford

*

 

The Divine Image

 

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

 

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

 

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

 

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

 

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk, or jew;

Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

 

–William Blake  (1757-1857)

*

 

In a Dark Time

–Theodore Roethke  (1908-1963)

*

 

Constantly risking absurdity

                                             and death

            whenever he performs

                                        above the heads

                                                            of his audience

   the poet like an acrobat

                                 climbs on rime

                                          to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

                                     above a sea of faces

             paces his way

                               to the other side of day

    performing entrechats

                               and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

                               and all without mistaking

                     any thing

                               for what it may not be

       For he’s the super realist

                                     who must perforce perceive

                   taut truth

                                 before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

                                  toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

                                     with gravity

                                                to start her death-defying leap

      And he

             a little charleychaplin man

                                           who may or may not catch

               her fair eternal form

                                     spreadeagled in the empty air

                  of existence

*

 

                                         17

This life is not a circus where
the shy performing dogs of love
                                                   look on

as time flicks out
                            its tricky whip
                                                   to race us thru our paces
Yet gay parading floats drift by
                               decorated with gorgeous gussies in silk tights
                                       and attended by moithering monkeys
                                                                  make-believe monks
                                                                  horny hiawathas
                                          and baboons astride tame tigers
                                                     with ladies inside
                      while googly horns make merrygoround music
                  and pantomimic pierrots castrate disaster
                               with strange sad laughter
             and gory gorillas toss tender maidens heavenward
                    while cakewalkers and carnie hustlers
                all gassed to the gills
                    strike playbill poses
           and stagger after every
                                              wheeling thing
While still around the ring
                                    lope the misshapen camels of lust
   and all us Emmet Kelley clowns
                                always making up imaginary scenes
with all our masks for faces
                            even eat fake Last Suppers
                                                         at collapsible tables
             and mocking cross ourselves 
                                                          in sawdust crosses

And yet gobble up at last
                                to shrive our circus souls
            the also imaginary
                                         wafers of grace

–Lawrence Ferlinghetti

*

 

Waxwings  

 

Four tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one.

 

Such merriment and such sobriety–

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk–

was this not always my true style?

 

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

 

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together–for this I have abandoned all my other lives.

 

–Robert Francis  (1901-1987)

*

 

Is anyone still reading this? It’s getting pretty long. But not long enough. On April 11th, we didn’t get around to mystic prose, but here’s something loving and lovely from Thomas Traherne:

 

47 

 

What life can be more pleasant, than that which is delighted in itself, and in all objects; in which also all objects infinitely delight? What life can be more pleasant, than that which is blessed in all, and glorious before all? Now this life is the life of Love. For this end therefore did He desire to Love, that He might be Love. Infinitely delightful to all objects, infinitely delighted in all, and infinitely pleased in Himself, for being infinitely delightful to all, and delighted in all. All this He attaineth by Love. For Love is the most delightful of all employments. All the objects of Love are delightful to it, and Love is delightful to all its objects. Well then may Love be the end of loving, which is so complete. It being a thing so delightful, that God infinitely rejoiceth in Himself for being Love. And thus you see how God is the end of Himself. He doth what He doth, that He may be what He is: Wise and glorious and bountiful and blessed in being Perfect Love. 

 

 

48 

 

Love is so divine and perfect a thing, that it is worthy to be the very end and being of the Deity. It is His goodness, and it is His glory. We therefore so vastly delight in Love, because all these excellencies and all other whatsoever lie within it. By Loving a Soul does propagate and beget itself. By Loving it does dilate and magnify itself. By Loving it does enlarge and delight itself. By Loving also it delighteth others, as by Loving it doth honor and enrich itself. But above all by Loving it does attain itself. Love also being the end of Souls, which are never perfect till they are in act what they are in power. They were made to love, and are dark and vain and comfortless till they do it. Till they love they are idle, or mis-employed. Till they love they are desolate; without their objects, and narrow and little, and dishonorable: but when they shine by Love upon all objects, they are accompanied with them and enlightened by them. Till we become therefore all Act as God is, we can never rest, nor ever be satisfied. 

 

–Thomas Traherne  (1636-1674)

*

 

 

(In Centuries of Meditations, Thomas Traherne has just over four hundred meditations. In the “Second Century,” he goes on an extended meditation of love, from numbers 39-67. I have included two typical ones.)

 

May all beings be happy.

May we live in love.

 

Johnny