A Season of Waiting

On the threshold

waiting

for the golden light

that desires to mirror itself

in my heart

inside

is silence

Advent, we say, is the season of waiting. We might more truly say that Advent is the season of desire - and desire unfulfilled, at that. Waiting is a form of emptiness, but it’s an emptiness that implies expectation: we wait for someone or something, do we not? And we desire the arrival of what we await.

In our hectic world we constantly face a barrage of distractions, from the chattering voices of social media with which we constantly keep in touch via our ubiquitous smartphones, from the pressures of commercialism which urge us to buy, buy, buy, at the very time of the year when we should be retreating into ourselves in silent contemplation and reflection. For this also is an aspect of advent: it is – or should be – a time of quiet reflection.

If only we can manage to be silent in ourselves, to still all those chattering voices which distract us, then we allow the true spirit of advent to reveal itself. That sense of expectant wonder is always present. Advent is in every moment. And that moment is universal. “Peace, be still.” were the words we are told Jesus spoke to calm the storm on that far Sea of Galilee. If we allow those words to echo in our hearts, whether we are Christian or not, and whether we celebrate the Christian day of Advent or not, we allow the true spirit of a universal advent to emerge, and we find ourselves filled with a renewing spirit of anticipation, wonder and silent joy.

The Journeying Star

Oh my heart, my other self;

you who dwell in city or in desert,

or in the cathedral silence of forests,

or close by the sea’s great voice

which is my voice also,

you look up and wonder at my shining.

Do you ask yourself:

what keeps me fixed in the night?

Why do I not journey

like the white and journeying moon?

There surely is heaven enough

in which to move;

there surely is space enough

for me to arc across the dark

above your head.

And yet I remain in my appointed place,

your dependable star,

obedient to your own stillness,

as fixed in my place as you are in yours:

we two are as immobile as mountains.

Perhaps you imagine

that if you remain in your place

then you always can find me;

you look up, and there I shall be:

we two are as predictable as the tides.

And then one night you move.

For the first time you dare

to take a single step,

and wonder of wonders:

I take that step with you.

You begin to walk, you move:

and I move with you.

And so your step becomes a journey,

and I journey with you

towards some promise,

some appointed destiny

some assignation rich with moment

for you and all who journey with you

towards your secret-bright redemption.

But wonder of wonders:

for the whole time you have been travelling

it is I who have remained in my appointed place:

it is you, my heart, who have been journeying;

and still you always can find me,

and I shall be with you

at your secret-bright redemption.

Illustration by Edmund Dulac, from the book The Stealers of Light by the Queen of Roumania

As Dew on the Earth

Choose now life

It descends from heaven

as dew on the earth

as light out of darkness

It comes as a storm wind

in squalls of darkness and light

Blessed are your nights, blessed are your days

your heart, your mind, your face.

*

Nu kies dan het leven

het daalt uit de hemel

als dauw op de aarde

als licht uit het donker.

Het komt als een stormwind 

in vlagen van donker en licht

Gezegend je nachten, gezegend je dagen,

je hart,  je verstand,  je gezicht.`

Huub Oosterhuis

translation by me

Artwork by Frank Zumbach

The Waves

The waves today are whales:

curling flukes of foam

that dissolve and vanish forevermore

as each wave folds upon itself

to break at my feet in a rush of white

here on the Oregon shore.

These are the leviathans of the Pacific

become one with their ocean home,

but more than this: these journeying giants

have now become the ocean itself:

tails of water, tails of foam.

In my vision it is the waves

which take the forms of tails,

slapping and rushing at the sand

to beach themselves at last,

wet and exhausted on the shore.

There are no whales, not today.

Perhaps tomorrow,

if I walk this same stretch of shore I will see them:

plumes of mist in the grey distance,

cruising the tug of currents

to their feeding grounds in the north.

For today, I have the white tails of the waves

with their memories older than an age

to remind me of times before my own

when all was new and beginning,

and the whales, the slide of currents,

the great ocean’s roll

were all and everything,

and the floating moon and the island sun

and the whales and the waves and my soul,

then as now, were one.

More than One Tone

Whisper

like a twig does

with a bird

like a snowdrop does

with the light

to hear a sigh

more than one tone of the harp

in one little shell

Feathers

There's a room I can glimpse in my mirror

Far and far from my home

This room is a river of fire

And this room is a circle of stones

This room is a plain that's as wide as the world

And this room is a land unknown

This room is a place where the owl calls

Through forests of mystery

And this room is a shore where the wild wave horses

Toss their white manes in the sea.

Feathers for my mirror

Feathers for my wings

Feathers for the world

Where the wild wolf sings

Feathers for my stories

Feathers for my pain

Feathers for my shelter

From the night's dark rain.

But if this room is a shadow

And if this room is a dream

And if this room is only a room

Then how would my mirror seem?

But feathered is my mirror

Feathered are my wings

And feathered is the world

Where my wild wolf sings

Feathered is the drum

Feathered is the moon

Feathered is the heart

That journeys alone.

And each feather that I find on my pathway

Each feather I must work to earn

I will know for each feather

That I give to my mirror

My mirror gives me one in return.

Nereid

How my body aches!

The tyrant shore's heaviness

drugs my tired limbs.

My throat is raw from breathing in

this unfamiliar, unseen nothing.

How can I not be exhausted

from such sustained effort

merely to remain alive

in this alien world of air?

Now dawn's silent light

has snared me,

has cast a silken net

across my glistening skin,

tight and unforgiving.

How can I know

how much time has passed

since I stranded here?

A single night?

A cycle of the white and silent moon?

A thousand years?

I recall stories of others of my kind,

washed ashore and becoming something other,

both less and more than they had been.

They never returned.

But in my struggle with the tides,

with the tug and slide of currents,

with life itself,

even in my struggle with this cruel nothing,

which cracks my throat with every breath,

I am resolved.

I will not become as those

whose lives are lived

in this unfamiliar, alien world of air.

I will not become something

other than who I truly am.

And so I mark my time.

I will wait patiently in this pain of dawn

I will wait in the sun's heat soon to come

I will wait curled up, unmoving:

a silken shadow where no shadows fall.

I will wait until some kind and trusting tide

returns me to my ocean home

in a single night,

or in a cycle of the white and silent moon,

or in a thousand years.

How could I live in this alien air?

How could my feet tread this alien earth?

I am as patient as the tides,

as inscrutable as my Mother Ocean

whose child I am

forever.

The Voice of the Ocean

Recently I visited Cape Lookout State Park on the Oregon coast:  a large peninsula which juts out into the Pacific. Standing at the entrance to the Cape I had a view of the ocean to either side, both to the north and to the south. On the north side lies a spectacular steep-sided bay which almost, but not quite, cuts the end of the Cape into an island. Being in such a place made me feel that I was standing at the edge of the world, and what lay beyond was all unknown and still to be discovered.

Now let's imagine that this landscape is a landscape made of time - which in some real sense, it is. Let's say that the coast lying to the south is the past, and the coast to the north is the future, and where I was standing on the peninsula is the present moment. This is the familiar landscape of time in which we all stand, with the past flowing through the present moment towards the unknown future. But there is another 'time' beyond this: the 'time' of the great ocean itself. To the ocean this 'past-present-future' time is meaningless. The ocean is eternal.

In that magical place that I had stood, the world around me seemed to offer me a lesson: a reminder of the eternal - and oh, how easy it is to think of the ocean in such a way! The unhurried waves role onto the wide beach, and the waves are themselves just the surface signs of the currents and undertows which flow unseen beneath. And even though the depths of that ocean remained hidden to me, the moving waves hinted at what might be happening below its surface: migrating whales on their long journey down to the southern feeding grounds (Earlier in the week I saw them spouting offshore!) and other creatures of that watery world that live out their lives in the silence of those blue depths.

Now overhead a bright harvest moon is shining, big and pale gold, the colour of ripe grain - just the way a harvest moon should look! The seasons turn, the waves which I hear from my window as I type this roll in to the wide sandy beach, as they have done for a thousand years and more, and these reflections on my visit to the Cape can be harvested. Unseen below the surface, the great whales slowly onward under the moon. In my imagination I can hear their songs echoing from the depths like the great voice of the ocean itself, and I feel that, simply because I am thinking about them, a small part of me is journeying with them through that deep blue eternity.

On the Shore

 

Almost exactly one hundred years ago the photographer Edward S. Curtis recorded with his camera an elderly Chinook woman gathering clams on the Pacific shore. The woman, we believe, was the daughter of the great Seattle, and was known as Princess Angelina. Now a century later, just a little farther south of where that photograph was taken, I stand on that same shore gazing out over that same ocean.

That photograph which Curtis made has inspired and informed so much of my life and my own writing and poetry. It is the archetypal image of a lone woman standing on the shore. Even a short while ago and half a world away I could not have imagined that I would be standing here, but a dear friend has made it possible, and the wished-for unthinkable has happened. The pathways of our life’s journeyings, whether they are those which happen on a map or which take place inside ourselves, are in the end always unpredictable. We know this so well through experience. We make our plans and the gods smile at our naivety and send us off in another direction entirely. At times that other direction is something other than we would have wished for, and yet on other occasions – as has happened to me now – it can bring rewards the more remarkable exactly because they were unexpected.

How many other footprints have been left on this same Pacific shore where I now stand? Princess Angelina’s certainly, but also those of Sacagawea, the courageous young Shoshone woman who was the invaluable guide on the William Clark and Merriweather Lewis expeditions of exploration. It was the wish of Sacagawea to see the ocean, and – just once – she did. And what of the many 19th-century settlers who with their wagons followed the Oregon Trail west? Finally to have reached this same shore where I now stand must have seemed like a blessing indeed after facing and persevering with the many dangers and hardships of their long journey. But to those settlers the ocean also clearly defined the limits of that journey: unlike the frontiers of the land it was a frontier that was absolute. Thus far, said the Oregon shore, and no farther.

The distant waves which even now I hear from my window as I write this have rolled in from another east: from Japan, from China, from Indonesia. The ocean as well has its journeys, and the patterns of its travelling currents are more predictable than the patterns of human travels. And what of my own footprints which I leave here on this shore? They will have been washed away by those journeying waves even before today’s sun has set, and certainly long before I myself travel back home to the Netherlands. And yet I have peace and take strength from knowing that, even though our timing might be different, they at last have joined those of Princess Angelina and Sacagawea. What the waves erase so easily finds a more enduring place in the memory, and it is there that my fragile footprints in the Oregon sand will remain.

The Question

In my ears: the unceasing voice of the wind. I wonder where the figure has vanished to. Perhaps if I could just make it to the crest of this dune I might yet catch another glimpse of her. With the wind at my back, and the blown grains of surface sand stinging my ankles, I struggle up the shadowed face of the great crescent of sand. 

With the light of the fast-sinking sun flooding my face I emerge from the dune’s shadow, and in two more paces I am standing full in the orange light on the sweeping crest of the dune. I scan the view in front of me for signs of life, and notice a dark outcrop of rock emerging like an island from the sand sea. And there in the shadow of the rock I notice a movement, as if she is deliberately revealing her presence to me – which perhaps she is. Perhaps she seeks this encounter as much as I myself do, for is that not her nature: to confront the other?

A few more minutes and I am climbing over the dark rock to reach the place where I spotted her. At first I do not see her, even though she is very close. Then two orange eyes open and stare at me from the shadows. Oh, such eyes! All the mysteries of the world are contained in those twin pools of amber. Her long mane of hair blows around her shoulders like a cloak, and her body, though human-enough, seems somehow other-than-human in a way in which I cannot explain to myself.

What does one say to a sphinx? Is it protocol to wait until spoken to when encountering such a fabulous creature of legend? Such encounters are too infrequent to really know the correct form of things. I feel awkward and unsure, and if I am truthful, also rather nervous. I notice the sphinx’s dark nails grown to the length of talons.

“May I ask you a question?” I hear a voice say. The voice is my own, desperate, apparently, to break the prolonged silence. The eyes of the sphinx fix onto and hold my own. She does not speak. “I would like to ask you” I continue, “if my life has a meaning.” Still the sphinx remains silent, scrutinizing me intently. Such silence can bring anxiety, so I continue: “I mean, sometimes I feel that it does, but at other times I feel just as equally that it’s all random, and it doesn’t matter what I do or plan because things happen anyway, but then it all more-or-less turns out in the end and I’m left wondering that even if I’d planned it all, would it have been any different? I suppose what I’d really like to ask you is: is there such a thing as free will, or is it all beyond our control? Although, now I think about it, I guess we must have free will, because it was my own free will that drove me to search for you so that I could ask you the answer to such a big, big question.”

Behind me, the pale moon is on the rise. The sphinx stares at me, and I seem to notice a faint smile. That ghost of a smile is still there as the sphinx curls up in the velvet shadows and silently falls asleep.

Artwork by David Bergen

Flight and Pursuit

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. A true free spirit, the wood nymph Daphne is never happier than when she is roaming the forests. The dappled sunlight of the forest glades are more than home to her: they are her preferred company, and she vows that she would sooner keep herself chaste than exchange the familiar company of the surrounding trees for a partner in life.

All might have continued to go well for Daphne, were it not for the fateful day when the glorious god Apollo happens to catch sight of her as she dances in a sunlit glade. At once smitten by her beauty and charm, the god approaches Daphne and attempts to seduce her. Now, Apollo is used to having his way, whether with mortal or with nymph. But for the first time ever he finds his advances rejected. In a moment’s distraction Daphne seizes her chance to flee the god’s amorous advances and runs away as fast as she can, hoping that her familiarity with the forest trails might offer her an advantage in her flight.

But Daphne’s knowledge of the secret paths through her beloved forest is proving no advantage when matched against a god’s bruised ego. Wounded pride mixed with ardour for the fleeing nymph only fuels the pace of Apollo’s pursuit. At the last moment of her flight, when the god is so close behind her that she can feel his hot breath on her back, Daphne calls out in panic to her father, the river god Peneios. 

The great river stirs angrily, and white-topped waves slap its banks in a frenzy of fury as Peneios sees the plight which his daughter is in. Unable to leave his watery domain, the river god makes a last-resort move to save his daughter. Just as Apollo reaches out to seize the nymph, his all-too-eager hands grasp, not soft and yielding female flesh, but bark and branches and dark green leaves. Peneios with his powers has changed his daughter into a laurel tree: one more tree among all of its fellows in the wood nymph’s beloved forest.

A handful of laurel leaves are Apollo’s only gain. How to save face? How to restore a god’s bruised ego? By declaring a defeat to be a victory and founding a tradition. Apollo decrees that from that moment on, a crown of laurel leaves will become the worthy symbol of a victor. And the god promptly begins the tradition by weaving for himself a crown from the leaves that just moments before had been the living flesh of the beautiful nymph.

How often has it happened that reality has been turned on its head, and those who have been bettered have, through one means or another, insisted that they have in fact triumphed? Saving face in such a way is familiar enough to us from our own current news events. But in the story of Daphne and Apollo we can perceive a deeper meaning. Sometimes circumstances force us to change, and to change dramatically, and we become something other than that which we were before. It might not always be a change which we have wished for ourselves, but it has been a change made necessary for our survival, in whatever form that might take.

But Daphne’s fate also gives us reason to hope. The nymph’s essential nature was that of her own beloved forest, and her essence did not change. Instead it became absorbed into what she truly loved the most. Even in dramatic change, even undergoing apparent complete metamorphosis, our true essence survives in some form, and endures beyond even the great change at life’s end.

Art: Daphne and Apollo by John William Waterhouse

A Lover's Call

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little 

Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you 

As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? 

Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of 

Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon 

Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? 

Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge, 

While you are replete with heavenly wisdom? 

Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you 

Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the 

Field, haven of your dreams? 

Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the 

Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and 

Filling their hands with your bounty? 

You are God's spirit everywhere; 

You are stronger than the ages. 

Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of 

Your spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love 

Floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed? 

Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the 

Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs 

Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury? 

Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands 

Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if 

We were hiding ourselves within ourselves? 

Recall you the hour I bade you farewell, 

And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips? 

That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love 

Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter! 

That kiss was introduction to a great sigh, 

Like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man. 

That sigh led my way into the spiritual world, 

Announcing the glory of my soul; and there 

It shall perpetuate until again we meet. 

I remember when you kissed me and kissed me, 

With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said, 

"Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose, 

And must live apart impelled by worldly intent. 

"But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of 

Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God. 

"Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate; 

Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower 

The cup of the sweetness of life. 

As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my 

Comforting groom; your memory, my Eternal wedding." 

Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in 

The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey 

To you my heart's every beat and affection. 

Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image 

Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his 

Shadow on my happy countenance of the past. 

Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty 

And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses. 

Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping 

From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? 

Do you know the greatness of my patience? 

Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying 

To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any 

Secret communication between angels that will carry to 

You my complaint? 

Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life 

Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me. 

Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me! 

Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me! 

Where are you, my beloved? 

Oh, how great is Love! 

And how little am I! 

*

Text and Artwork

by

Kahlil Gibran

Persephone

Really it takes so little.

No, not the act itself, but the decision

made in a sliver of time: in a single heartbeat.

No more time than it takes

for the rustling stroke of a bird’s wing.

No more time than it takes

for the slash of light that sears the sky

when my cloud-shrouded father draws near.

No more time than this is needed

to change my world, my everything:

my own life’s passing

in the cycle of a single year.

And I will change.

The decision was snatched from a moment 

a thousand years ago,

before I even knew the darkness

of my mother’s womb

I knew another darkness.

In that moment, in that eon,

through the sheer force of my will

my blood drained from my body,

disappeared as water from a pool.

Now look upon me: a shell thing,

strangely echoing, never growing old:

a hollow creature

white as the snows of Parnassus

and as cold.

Now I will know a new darkness.

Only a few seeds are needed

for a new life with my lord:

the ingestion of a new fruit

far from the sun,

swallowed in the bridal chamber

of a new dark accord,

far from my mother’s sustaining love,

far from the rustle of birds’ wings,

far from the rolling ghosts of clouds,

far from any hope of return

from this shrouded world of shrouds.

My new blood will be

the red sap of pomegranates.

My new subjects will be

these pale shades of the once-alive.

My new desire will be

desire for these shadows

where the only fulfilment will be

to know that I will remain

forever unfulfilled.

The dry white husk of my body will be

sustained by the lymph of pomegranates.

And I will be queen to a darkness

both wished-for and unwilled.

Photo: Anna Chipovskaya, photographer Nikolay Biryukov for Interview Magazine Russia, Febr. 2014

Isis

Who, upon their entry to the world,

can look up and know

that their mother is so beautiful?

Who in the light of day

can look up and see

their mother's arching form

fill all of heaven's mystery?

Who, when the great Disk voyages

in its night barque below the world,

can gaze at their mother's darkness

and see how it has filled with endless stars

a lapis heaven-cloth unfurled?

I, who wonder at the beauty of my Mother

also tread the ground that is my Father:

every valley, every dune and every stone

is part of Him, who wed the heavens

and gave me life, but not for me alone.

Mother Sky and Father Earth:

your daughter greets you, and gives thanks

to you who gave her and her husband birth.

I would be worshipped!

I would be glimpsed by mortal eyes

I would be seen for who I truly am:

daughter of earth and heaven's starry skies

a goddess, god-begotten,

and not just this alone:

wife to my husband,

sister to my brother,

giver of new life,

immaculate mother,

trembling young bride,

wise and venerated crone:

I am all these

and many another.

Woven symmetries of form

beget their own reflected love

the hawk's wing flutter of the Soul

greets the incandescent Spirit dove

Heaven and Earth, in brief conjoining fire

emit the spark that captures life within

as hawk and dove release the gods' desire

and new worlds from an old world order can begin.

On the Silent Wings of Prayer

True prayer requires no word, no chant

no gesture, no sound.

It is communion, calm and still

with our own godly Ground.

- Angelus Silesius

On the Silent Wings of Prayer

What is it to pray? If we say the word ‘God’ to ten people in a room, then it is quite likely that in those ten different heads there will be ten different ideas of what ‘God’ actually is, and what God means to them. Perhaps prayer is like this as well. We have a general idea of what a prayer is. We think of an attitude of praying, and of reciting, either aloud or silently, either in company as part of a congregation, or in solitude, a formularized verse or passage of text. Or perhaps our prayer is in the form of a petition: we are asking for something of a higher Self beyond ourselves.

What that ‘something’ is might cover a spectrum of interests and hopes. On a rather material level, we might pray for victory in a conflict, or even success in some sporting event. On a more personal level, we might ask for help, or for strength and courage in a situation which we feel overwhelms us. We might ask to keep a dear one safe in a situation of peril, or for guidance in navigating our way through trying circumstances which bewilder us, and which leave us unsure which way to turn.

As well as the above examples there might be many more situations in which we pray, the form which our prayers take, and what we are praying for. But one thing which all these sorts of prayers have in common, whether spoken aloud or voiced silently within ourselves, is that they are all, in some form, prayers with words. We use our own familiar language in which to pray. But is this the only way to pray?

Prayer is prayer, and perhaps prayer can be reduced to intention only. Perhaps, if our intention is there, then we do not even need words to pray. In this sense, perhaps intention is the purest form of prayer: a silent connection with the Divine that not only is without words, but which goes beyond words, beyond the limitations of language to become a pure expression of the spirit. The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore described trees as the expression of an endless striving of earth towards heaven. In this mystic striving of the forms of nature we may glimpse this wordless prayer, this intention of all things to connect with that mysterious Other, encountered in a place beyond words, beyond human language.

The other evening I watched a large flock of starlings wheel and turn in the soft light of dusk. What mysterious figures were they tracing out in the twilit sky? I could only stand in silence and wonder at the myriad pairs of wings turning in perfect harmony, describing their unknown language in the paths of their flight. I could not interpret their lace-like traceries, but in those many wings I felt that I had glimpsed a wordless prayer made visible.

Echoes

In the thin air of morning

I speak with sweet sounds

drawn from all the

unknown murmurs

that yesterday were left

at the waves' edge

Listen!

Listen to what I release

into the morning:

each tone

another story:

unearthly tableaus

shards of myths

and ancient voices

echo over the shore

I am the daybreak

my slender body

born from the sea

my flute now whispers

and then cries out

for her:

my other self

who stayed behind

among the waves

having no desire

to be tailless

Now at each sunrise

and again at sunset

I make my flute speak

I know the night is near

when my eyes colour

from meadow green

to the deeper green

of the waves

I shiver

while my heart listens

waiting, ever waiting

for my love

in the light

of the silent moon

Sculpture:  La Sirène by Camille Claudel