Category: Invocation

It’s the silence

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For MWG

It’s the silence that’s the really important
thing – three or four times a day if that’s
remotely possible

It’s the silence that’s the really important
thing because the cave-like walls around the
edges of the no-noise afford resounding
echoes of the silent music you really need to
remember, the in-breath, the out-breath, the
heartbeat, the murmur

Not so much THE, actually, but rather hers, or
his, your own dear co-creators who gaze out
lovingly, with attentive eye and ear and scent
and taste and touch, from the very heart and
source of an infinite waterfall that heals and
raises dead things buried deep in damp earth
and irrigates the depths of the soul

It’s the silence that’s the really important
thing – three or four times a day if that’s
remotely possible

because that’s where the deepest encounters
take place, that’s where you meet vivacity
that’s where you know that because She’s still
breathing, singing, laughing, being, weeping,
growing, making – so, too, in all eternity

you are, in I AM

SRM

Elements of belonging

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Last evening I got lost in a reverie with David Whyte’s poem Working Together: master teacher of the arts of evocation and of invocation, his poems “haunt” me, hovering in and around me, in much the same way Mary Oliver’s do, or May Sarton’s, or William Stafford’s. Poets who become our favourites do so, I guess, because something of their form, heart, precision and soul takes up residency somewhere deep, deep, deep within us.

… may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine

David Whyte
from Working Together
The House of Belonging

Though I knew of the late John O’Donohue’s sublime works (Anam Cara – soul friend; Divine Beauty etc) before I discovered David Whyte, I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised when I learned that the two were the closest of friends. Each, consciously or unconsciously, writes blessing. The poetic voice of each – the sound, the timbre, the vibration – are heard once, never to be forgotten … may we, in this life / trust …

Some lovely video footage of John, writing at home, comfortably seated beside an Irish peat fire, has left me with a burning desire some day to visit The Burren [YouTube], perhaps to encounter the soul of the great man in the vast and ancient open spaces there, and maybe, by some miracle, to bump into his old friend David Whyte who, I like to imagine, still walks and remembers there from time to time … to those elements / we have yet to see …

But the actual going there, to The Burren, will not, I think, be necessary, even if someday achieved and delighted in. For the poetry of life has already done its work, and friendships I delight in – some of whom I’ve set eyes on, and some of whom I haven’t, have already been shown to be gifts and graces of that ultimate Oneness for which we instinctively reach. All that’s necessary each day is for me to meditate, remember … or imagine.

More imagination …

~ windinmywheels ~ 2 Comments

Thinking again today of John Davidson’s Imagination, I remembered a hymn I loved in my childhood – probably brought to mind because the word “mart” appears in both: in the former, “The mart of power, the fount of will”, and in the latter, “Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart …” (How the mind likes to make connections!)

I realise that my love for poetry dates back to early appreciation of psalms and hymnal. “… met within thy holy place / To rest awhile …” spoke to me long ago of the grace and gift of imagination, my own, that of humanity generally, and that of the immortal, invisible Creator of all.

John Ellerton reminds me to enter inwards – through “little space” – to the Eternal in Whom everything that is, in the heavens and upon the earth, are forever united – now.

Behold us, Lord, a little space
From daily tasks set free,
And met within thy holy place
To rest awhile with thee.

Around us rolls the ceaseless tide
Of business, toil, and care;
And scarcely can we turn aside
For one brief hour of prayer.

Yet these are not the only walls
Wherein thou mayst be sought:
On homeliest work thy blessing falls,
In truth and patience wrought.

Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart,
The wealth of land and sea;
The worlds of science and of art,
Revealed and ruled by thee.

Then let us prove our heavenly birth
In all we do and know;
And claim the kingdom of the earth
For thee, and not thy foe.

Work shall be prayer, if all be wrought
As thou wouldst have it done;
And prayer, by thee inspired and taught,
Itself with work be one.

John Ellerton, 1826-93

Light-possessed atmosphere

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Last evening I mentioned the Jodrell Bank Observatory – home to star-gazing telescopes, and the International Space Station – temporary home to some of the world’s highest and best trained scientists and explorers. Tonight I’m thinking of a favourite American poet and journal keeper, herself a kind of human observatory whose powers of empathy, invocation, perception and reflection have me returning “into, out of, under” her works over and over again. Here’s May Sarton’s

Invocation

Come out of the dark earth
Here where the minerals
Glow in their stone cells
Deeper than seed or birth.

Come under the strong wave
Here where the tug goes
As the tide turns and flow
Below that architrave.

Come into the pure air
Above all heaviness
Of storm and cloud to this
Light-possessed atmosphere.

Come into, out of, under
The earth, the wave, the air.
Love, touch us everywhere
With primeval candor.

May Sarton
Collected Poems: 1930-1993, page 364