September 2023 (Vol. XXXVI, No. 8)
Dear Friends ~ It always seems to me that September invites us to things new. My grandchildren have been back at school for two weeks now, but when I was their age, September, just after Labor Day weekend in the U.S, announced the "New Year": new books, new teachers, a world of new ideas. All leading hopefully to learning, understanding, and perhaps gaining some clarity. I'm still drawn to that search for clarity — not in math or science — but in life amidst this cosmos.
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Out here in the woods I can think of nothing except God. It is not so much that I think of [God] as I am aware of [God] as I am of the sun and the clouds and the blue sky and the thin cedar trees...engulfed in the simple and lucid actuality of the afternoon — I mean God's afternoon — this sacramental moment of time when the shadows will get longer and longer and one small bird sings quietly in the cedars, one car goes by in the remote distance, and the oak leaves move in the wind.
High up in the summer sky I watch the silent flight of a vulture, and the day goes by in prayer. This solitude confirms my call to solitude. The more I'm in it, the more I love it.
Clearness doesn't always mean that things will be easy or comfortable. Sometimes we're given clearness to do hard or painful or scary things. But underneath the discovery of clearness on difficult questions is always the promise of Christ: I will be with you always.
Spirit that inspires
Allowing the will to respond
with action;
And may all judgments and denials
Be released
That our souls are freed to
Serve the Light with joy!
Thus will we recognize oneness with
The Divine Spark dwelling
Within our hearts,
Fanning it to illuminate the way.
I the Tree
I am yours—
your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces,
you have a piercing need
For this bright morning
dawning for you.
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
When the day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
If only we're brave enough to see it.