Sabbath - a rhythm of rest

"We who have lost our sense and our senses - our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.
We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lves in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.
We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simply being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths, for learning how to live again."

U.N. Environmental Sabbath Programme

I wish each of you a time out, a time of spaciousness and generosity with enough leisure to think creative thoughts, with enough quiet to hear your own thoughts (and maybe the sounds of nature too!), with enough space to breathe deeply. And then breathe again - simply because it feels so good.  May you gift yourself this - your own birthright and blessing.

I wish you a true and lovely Sabbath, this week, and every week.

Deep with the winds of homecoming

My friend, the artist Melanie Weidner, has always created images that move me deeply.  This one, Hurled Through with Birds was inspired by a quote from Rilke (one of my favourite poets!):  
"The inner, what is it, if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming."

I grew up in the mountains of south-eastern BC in Canada, surrounded by mountains resembling the ones in Melanie's print. I used to walk home for lunch most days. One fine Spring day, when I was about ten years old, cheerfully walking along, I found myself seized by the Spirit, filled with joy, scoured clean of all shadows and grime.

Of course at the time I didn't know it was the Spirit entering me. I did know that I was awe-struck, my feet pinned unmoving to the ground, as my heart expanded past what I imagined it could be. All around me BEAUTY seemed to fill the very air. I almost couldn't breathe for the sheer hugeness of it all.

Even now I struggle to find words for that transforming experience. Back then, I raced home and tried my best to tell my Mum, to ask her, desperately wanting to know -  what had happened to me?! what was this?!

She did not recognize what I was telling her about. Or perhaps she didn't have the words either... At the time I simply felt like I couldn't make her understand how IMPORTANT it was,  how life-changing, how riveting. And having no way to make sense of it, I let it slide away into my subconscious and forgot about it.

Then, 28 years later, at Pendle Hill( a Quaker Study Centre outside Phildelphia), I was given a handle to recognize this experience for what it was. In a class on Nurturing the Spirit, our dear teachers, Fran Taber and Sondra Cronk, asked us to share a time when we experienced God moving in our hearts. Boom - that day came to me! And for the first time I understood what that had been...... that time of being "....hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming." I was gifted the in-sight to see and recognize the Spirit taking up residence inside me for that amazing moment.

And how about you? Do you too have a time when the Spirit grabbed you and filled your heart with the winds of homecoming? I'd love to hear about it!  

Melanie's image was used by permission. If you'd like to see more of her art, maybe own a copy yourself, here's a link to her web-site: http://www.listenforjoy.com/art/hurledthrough.html

Summer Prayer

I pray this day
for holy clarity, for the fire
of devotion, of awareness,
burning bright, smoke-free
in my core.

I pray this day
for the deep heart of water
flood of compassion, of kindness
irrigating fields
drowning the weeds of self-doubt,
filling the thirsty green stems
with the juice of ardour.

I pray this day
for the wild bite of wind,
scouring clean, whipping
dust away from every surface, the wind of
Spirit, breath of no-nonsense,
gasp of give it up, give it all over.

I pray this day
for deep roots, for earth’s
stillness and solidity, for
the hidden core of love
buried wild and free,
secret and silent, bone-deep
in the heart’s centre.

Today, I pray
for insight and wisdom,
Cosmic Wind turning me round,
pinning me down
tossing me up,
and my own self satiated
with bright joy,
the sharp tongue of Life.


            © 07.24.2010   Gyllian Davies

a Rilke tree poem

Thinking of the beauty of trees, I've been reading some of my favourite poets for their images and tree-metaphors. Here's one:

"Prelude

Whoever you are: at evening step forth
out of your room, where all is known to you;
last thing before the distance lies your house:
whoever you are.
With your eyes which wearily
scarce from the much-worn threshold free themselves,
you lift quite slowly a black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that yet in silence ripens.
And as your will takes in the sense of it,
tenderly your eyes let it go . . . "

Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by M.D. Herter Norton, 1938

A Poem a day - 2nd installment

Back when my friend Tina was 'infecting' people with the bug for writing a poem a day she wrote this one which I love:

Where to start

I wouldn't know where to start

says Carol, when I ask

if she'll write poems

after she quits work. You start

with the taste of the tea,

the look of the kitchen, the view

out the window, the dream.

Start right here, with the sound

of a quiet house, faint rainbeat

on the roof, flicker of candle deep

down in a blue cup, the feel

of a wet shirt from feeding baby geese

and pulling out soggy pooped-on hay

while rain splashes down and the geese

cheep in confusion at the disappearance

of their ground and the intimidating pile

of new dry hay, like the sudden arrival

of a forest. Start with the thought

of listening to the day, of chronicling

the invisible currents as the days pass,

since the  currents are not apparent up close

but the maps must be drawn up close

before we can stand back

to see the way the river runs,

before we see how it was

to travel into this new place,

this motherhood, this remembering,

before we can peel

the layers of the story back

and look at how the river has carried us

when we didn't know how we could carry

one more thing.

                             copyright Tina Tau,  2000

You as Poet!

There is a mystery that will awe you waiting at your fingertips for you to discover it - it's the writing of poems. This past week I've been infecting people with the itch to write their own poems. I know they're hiding inside of everyone, maybe a little shy, but there all the same. Anyone can write a poem - they're so accessible! Yes, they're waiting inside you too.

You can write one anywhere - in a cafe, on the bus, while waiting for a meeting to start, in bed (I write many of mine from that quiet sanctuary). 

You can write a poem on anything - in a notebook or on the back of a restaurant receipt. On a napkin or on the fly-leaf of a book (if it's your book!). You can write a poem while on the bus, or in the kitchen, or in a waiting room. You can write it on any subject you please, on the mundane or the profound, the every day or the unique. You can choose a personal perspective or a global one. Where else do you get to be so totally in command?!

Yup. A poem a day invites the Holy into your life too. Are you up for it?

Try it out and let me know how it goes - I love to read or hear other people's poetry. It takes me into a world I might never visit if not for their poem, and that's a precious gift indeed.