-1-
My arms can’t hold him
My heart cannot let him go
My soul feels empty
-2-
My love has not left
In hides deep within my soul
It can’t find his heart
-3-
The rain stops – silence
Earth smiles in gratitude
Clouds fill with promise
-4-
Soft warm summer night
Stars are blurred by humid air
Frost will return soon
-5-
Blue skies lie to me
Nothing is ever the same
After the rain stops
As I sit in darkness, a glimmer of light shines around the dark edges of my closed eyes,
growing until my field of vision is full of blinding white light.
It is here that hope and love float freely on waves of peace and
Krishna’s voice sings along with the song of my heart.
He flushes away the darkness and frees me from the pain it carries.
I feel sorry for the darkness. It lacks the power to forget itself.
Do I have that power?
I continue to sit and wait for an answer.
As I wait, silence pervades the shrine room and my heart.
The others in the room disappear when I close my eyes,
their energy lost in the space between the cushions.
I feel neither their presence nor their absence,
until my eyes open and their collective energy floods over me intruding on my silence and peace.
The bell rings, three times and the session ends.
I must put away thoughts, cut off fear or bliss, end the waiting and
Reluctantly resume a presence in this material world.
A world of light, dark, hope, despair
love, loss, hate, and peace.
Silent sitting can isolate or open my heart.
The choice is mine to make.
A choice that can be good or evil,
warm or cold,
lasting or fleeting but really,
is there a difference?
Here and now or there and then?
The break is over and the sitting resumes.
Odd thoughts and feelings float out of the deep recesses of my mind
in the silence of the shrine room.
There are thoughts that come and go.
Some are gentle and kind,
others judgmental and cruel.
Shadows from the past sneak in disturbing my peace,
rekindling painful times.
I let them stay,
feel their pain and then let them pass.
They are not forgotten or forgiven but allowed to slip by, dismissed from my life.
Do the others I sit with feel my pain or know my thoughts?
Is my pain theirs too?
Are we really all the same?
But what if we believe in different things?
I, in my Lord Krishna,
they in themselves.
Their breath guides their thoughts.
His breath guides mine.
This retreat is a place of silence and peace.
A place to reflect on everything or nothing.
Their nothing is my everything.
My everything is none of their concern because to them, it’s not real.
So, what is real?
My thoughts, their nothingness, my love, their indifference,
My self their no self?
I don’t know…
I’m tired now.
I’ll start over later,
when the bell rings again.
I hear cries in the darkness of the night.
They are sounds from my soul draped in velvet.
I hear songs sung in whispers
floating between the night trees as
silent, invisible swirls of chi
mingle with my thoughts and
illuminate my soul.
I lie down on the mossy forest floor and
feel myself seep into the earth to
become one with the trees and starry night sky.
All separation dissolves and everything exists together
at this singular point in time and space.
The forest and I have become one in spirit and soul,
both human and Divine.
We are all home together at last,
never to be alone again.
Seashells and wave echoes
Swirl and laugh in the emptiness behind my eyes.
I have let it go, sent it away,
Opened the lock and set it free.
This open space is vast, quiet and soft.
Wave echoes roll around the edges of my inner space
And blend with the stillness that never stands still.
There is a flow and a wash to this interior space.
A space that holds it all and more.
More me, more us,
All together in the vastness of love and peace, so come,
Kick off your shoes and dance with me.
Listen to the song of the seashells and watch,
Watch the empty space fill with us and more.
Catch the wave echoes when they come around again but
This time, this one last time,
Never let go.
I will make you soup, my Lord and
Fill it with the spices of life so that you may taste the wonders you have given to me.
There will be salt for truth and
Pepper for hurt.
Sugar for love and
Bitters for sadness.
Potatoes will let you taste the flavor of the earth and
Beets, the warmth of the soil.
Carrots will spill out their liquid orange sunshine for your pleasure and
Savory herbs will add flavor to surprise your taste buds with every sip.
My delight in the life you have given me makes me what to give back to you so,
I will make you soup, my Lord
And I will stir it with love.
I have joined my sisters and retreated.
Back and back to the very beginning,
Not just my beginning but yours, ours.
Back to when the sacredness of women was honored.
A time when it was known and valued that women were
The givers of life and holders of stars.
Society has changed over the years, but in our hearts there remains
An understanding of the continuity of our original place and purpose.
We know that we are not in or of this world
But exist in our eternal beingness.
We are awake and are coming back to claim our rightful place.
The past is remembered in our collective consciousness and it is with renewed Courage and strength that we again dance in the forest,
And the forest dances in us.
Once more the mountains and ocean belong to us,
And we to them.
Our renewed story is a recognition of our eternal story.
It is the story of our connection to the divine,
Not one limited to any certain place or time but a story for all eternity.
The same eternity that resides in a milkweed bloom, a bird’s egg,
A baby’s laugh, and our hearts.
And although our voices remain soft and gentle, we will no longer be silenced.
We are not done with this world and
The writing of our collective story will never be finished
As it has no beginning or end.
Our time is now and together we will step out of time one by one and
Rejoin our story where we were forced out of it years ago.
We are still the givers of life and
The holders of stars.
Sacred women once more,
As one voice and mind.
Together again and always.
There is inner stillness in the predawn darkness as
The forest begins to stir around me.
They seem to notice my presence
“Someone is among us”, they mummer.
As I sit in silence and wait,
The Eastern sky begins to lighten and
The earth responds with movement,
Air movement, a stirring, ever so slight and gentle,
More sensed than felt.
I continue to sit in silence and wait.
At last I can feel them coming closer, one by one.
Not in outer distance but in inner peace.
As they circle me I can feel them saying “Welcome”.
They bring such wisdom in their silence.
Such kindness without motion or audible voice
But a voice nonetheless, a voice that is felt with the soul
Not heard with the ears.
A voice that is eons old, no, older than that:
A voice that has existed since the beginning of time.
Since the time before manifestation.
Their voices speak to me in the sweet darkness of the woods
Telling me a tale of love, acceptance and kindness.
A story of life, of the essences of loss and the pain of suffering,
Of the agony of misunderstanding and mind induced perceptions, and
Selfish longings and needs: all of my own making.
But there is sympathy and empathy in these voices too, they know the pain,
They have felt the suffering, tasted the tears and watched their own hearts melt with disappointment.
The agony of loss is no stranger to their collective heart, so they truly understand my
State of mind today and give me comfort and love in a way only they can.
They know how I miss he who passed through the veil, they know him and he them. They are one together and it is his presence they allow me to feel here in this mourning morning softness.
The trees are my saviors; they surround me with their gentle strength and hold me in their arms
In the hardest of times, they understand without judgment, they feel my heart beat with theirs
As they stand together – silent sentinels of everlasting light and hope in
Noble silence and truth.
I am renewed by their strength, honored by their kindness and
Forever grateful for their love.
Outcroppings of rock and
Lichen covered pinnacles of grandeur are
God’s favorite places.
Here he lets us see,
Lets us in on the secret of what makes him happy.
His eyes sculpted the mountains with a glance,
His hands scooped the valleys with ease giving light and dark a place to play.
His breath still powers the winds that sail and howl over the cliffs
And stir the hearts of human kind.
The mountains are God’s sacred place and
A place where I go to feel His power,
To be closer to heaven
To touch and feel His love.
He exists forever in the hard landscape of rock and
In the soft soulscape of my heart.
The night sky displays
A sea of stars that shine as
Pinpoints of hope in the darkness.
It is a sweet darkness,
A still darkness in the arms of God.
He holds his creation close to his heart and
Gives it space to grow and spread His promise of love’s light.
The confluence of our channels of prayer and the gathering of oms has the power to
Open the sails of change.
Sails that steer ships with hulls full of enlightened souls
Through the welcoming love of God’s thoughts
Populating the emptiness between the stars
And the heart of the Creator.
It is through us that His word becomes manifest
And His darkness is empty no more.
I need to see the moon lit patterns of white and shadow on the grass and hear how they speak to me once more.
The chimes are calling me again from the silence of my soul to look, listen and observe.
I need to hear the hungry owl’s cries in the night, feel its silent wings move swiftly in the darkness,
Too swiftly for its pray, and watch with detachment the
Swift death, natural and inevitable, made a villain only
By my thoughts.
I need to leave my disturbed thoughts and become the stillness in the chaos,
I need to reenter the silent swiftness of the owl’s wings and moon shadows.
For it is the only place to be and
The only place where I have ever existed.
I must never be distracted again.
My being had begun to seep away while I was preoccupied,
Distracted by another, an unnatural evil but one of my own making.
But the owl’s wings are bringing me home now,
My time of regression is done, but it has taken its toll.
My heart is weaker, my thoughts harder to read.
There is never regressing without damage to my soul.
Solitude and stillness, as a getaway to the road back, are coming into view…
The road back leads to the place of reclamation of my soul,
Back to the essence of bliss, to the everlasting light and to
His hand in mine.
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