There is no doubt about it!

Solitude is the challenge!

Choosing soul,

Wrapping it in silence,

Finding prayer;

An experience,

Enchanting,

Desirable in the end

But on the journey

Too elusive

And so rare.

2013.03.02.2000 ©

How does one resign oneself

To a softer experience,

Like that of the glow of the moon?

To cool reflections,

Over the harsh brightness

Of the images of the sun at noon?

To hold on to the holy, silent nights of winter

And not run to the mad heat of the night

Teeming with the pride of life

In the shadows of June?

The world turns too quickly

And tilts in the direction of life’s own reflection

For the aging soul, too soon;

Amid the hopes that spring eternal

That another day will give

Its adolescent boldness

The visions it requires

To cause the proper light again to bloom.

No more, I say!

There is nothing that can save me

From the darkness

I must face with the courage of an helpless infant

About to be spit so harshly

From the comforts of the womb.

Only the hope born in a cold cave

Of life’s self longing for salvation,

The cross too forced upon me

And quickly bloodied,

And the prospect of a resurrection

After I lay sleeping for a while

In an all too common tomb.

Move on, you tired pilgrim,

To what is born in the dark

And the stillness

And the silence

Of a solitary room;

For there you will find what it is

That you give to the world

Like it finds every day

In the heavens of obscurity

Broken only by the sweet, gentle image

Of a peaceful moon.

2013.02.13.0000 ©

The process of finding the definition of life

Everyday, is the measure of gain and of loss;

It is growing in the knowledge of Love and of Eternity,

It is carrying a mortal cross.

Most of my days, my life is wasted

In distant reveries; my energies

I tend to squander or dissipate;

I have lost the order of living and

Its spiritual connections I cannot keep straight.

So, I must stop,

Whenever this becomes conscious and

I must realign what I think, do and say

To the center of my simply being

With a few moments

When I sleep, play or pray.

2013.02.05.0900 ©

There is nothing around me

In the things that I see

That can give me a taste of Eternity;

All the images and icons and memories

Are but human endeavor to find sacred and holy.

It is only when I feel the weight of the cross,

When I am naked and humble with less gain and more loss

And the comfort and caution into the wind I can toss

That my vision and my sense would seem to clear.

Then nothing is everything

And I am a part;

And my living is loving

What is close to the heart;

Where the journey is the end

Just as sure as the start

And the silence is the season

That would steer

All my longings

To a wandering in the desert

With the knowledge

That they are all just passing years

And the Promised Land is the only expectation

I should ever want

To see or to taste or to hear.

2013.01.20.1800 ©

I have no control over that which is given to me

As I enter the world from the dark and the quiet

Each day I begin;

From the birth day at which I started it all through

The years that I strove to manage it,

The elusive spin.

But so soon will come a day

With no need for observation

Of the others’ response;

The dark and the silence

Will all of my attention

By my dying

Be my living

Entrance.

2013.01.08.1800 ©

The quest for the constant Presence

Like we had with God before the fall

Is the battle to recapture the silence

Of the innocence

From the shadow of the pall

That covers it with the noise and confusion

From everything but that which we had

Because now we must find the truth for ourselves

Of the difference between the good and the bad.

The practice of the constant Presence

Requires our death

To what we hold so dear

So that the voice of God that we knew so well

Once again in the silence we can hear.

The quest is the mark of our knowledge

Of the measure of our gain and our loss.

The practice is the presence of the One that came first

And our comfort with the way of His Cross.

2013.01.05.0900 ©

Profanity is thinking

That the world is mine

Or that I belong to the flesh;

It is turning my soul to a lesser good,

It is putting my God to the test;

It is forgetting that tomorrow or soon

I am dust

And remembering too much

What was past too much lust;

It is wanting to have

What I want as I must

And rejecting the holy within.

2012.12.01.0800 ©