The Light of the Year

Child of silver, child of white

sunrise pale and sunset amber

lace from the dew of a thousand dawns

woven by the meadow’s slumber.

In your hands a precious light

to step the pathway’s coming year

with all that time and light adorns.

For all that happens on the path

By you is blessed and meaningful

whether for me is bliss or wrath

and whether clear or not-so-clear.

One thing only I would ask:

release your treasure gradually

through sunsets’ gold and seasons’ turning

so the pathway I may see

in a perfect twelve-month burning.

Painting by Gaston la Touche

Christmas Greeting

I wish all my readers great joy in the stillness of Christmas

to hearten and enlighten your New Year.

*

Painting The Shepherds by George de la Tour 

The Sister Stars

How high we are here;

seated somewhere

between the stars

and the sleeping town below.

See: we are so high

that we have but to reach out

to touch the moon’s bright face

as it rises to greet us from the horizon.

See: we are so high

that we need only to listen carefully

to hear the murmured whisperings

of the gods above

as they chart the tide of the affairs of men

asleep and unknowing in the world below.

See: we are so high

that we count ourselves

as sisters to the stars.

Continuing their journeys

our sister stars are unaware

that their wanderings, their very courses,

are traced out by us.

For nothing can happen in the heavens

unless we three decide that it will.

The truth is: the gods are helpless,

unable to act without our instructions

(although they do not know this,

and imagine that their schemes

are all their own).

And so we three sit here quietly

through the blue Arabian night,

making the decisions of gods,

naming new constellations:

here: the leopard,

with glowing twin-sun eyes,

there: the stooping falcon,

wings stretched between galaxies,

and there: the heroine,

riding a winged sphinx

to stars yet more distant than her own:

all creatures of our night-watch fantasy.

But even these things are pastimes,

pleasantries, mere diversions.

For our true purpose

Is to search until we find one star,

and one star only

among our myriad sister stars.

Somewhere, if only we can find it,

shines a star that will save the world.

and that is the star

which we will call down to earth.

Painting: Arabian Nights by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant

Advent: Silent Wonder

Today is the beginning of Advent: the first of the four Sundays leading towards the Nativity. The word Advent means ‘the coming’, and, if we open ourselves to the spirit of Advent, these four weeks contain a heightened sense of anticipation, of expectancy, of hope, of waiting, and trusting in new life not yet fully known. 

Here in northern Europe the winter is advancing, and for me the winter is a time of silence. Nature grows more silent in winter. There are no leaves on the bare limbs of the trees to give us the breeze’s summery rustle, and many animals are less active. Even the birds do not sing their dawn chorus in the winter darkness – and when the snow lies thick upon the ground all seems to fall still in the muffled white silence.

Silence also is for me a part of Advent. It is this silence which lifts Advent beyond being a time of the Christian liturgical year into being a time which touches upon mysteries which are more universal: those mysteries of the heart which touch us all. When the spirit of Advent is combined with the spirit of silence we are in a state of waiting in silence. And when that waiting is a waiting with a sense of deep and joyful anticipation for what is to come, we create a space in which love can grow, in which trust may flourish. 

Love, hope, trust, silence, waiting in joy for what is to come, are all doors. Combining these doors together into one opens the door to the approach of wonder. But what is this wonder? To trust in love for what is to come, to allow our inner silence to grow in this time of waiting, allowing the loving-kindness that is the essence of the divine love to grow in us, is the true spirit of Advent: the spirit of anticipation, of silent wonder.

Detail Painting Madonna by Fra Filippo Lippi

Grace

So small a soul, so large a house

with dark and gloomy rooms.

A child divine in search of light

her own light now subsumes.

But in her heart she weaves

the mystic window of her skin

through which her dance takes flight

translucent, pure and wondrous thin

on wings of purest light.

The searching child .. she reaches out 

to touch a state of Grace

 A bud in flower - a single glance ..

No soul remains untouched by love

as long as spirits dance.

Painting by Polina Yakovleva

Candles in the Earth

Today, November 11th, is traditionally the feast day of Saint Martin. Martin was a 4th-century soldier who, when still only eighteen, arrived with his troops at the city gates of Amiens. As the soldiers filed into the city they passed a beggar. Martin was the only one who stopped, but being poor himself he had nothing to give. Instead, he tore his cloak in half and gave half to the beggar as some protection against the winter cold.

That night in his dream Jesus appeared, wearing the half-cloak that Martin had given to the beggar, saying to his angels: “See, how this young man has clothed me.” The dream had a profound effect upon Martin. He gave up soldiering to lead a life of simple devotion, founding a monastery where the poor could always depend upon finding shelter. 

In the later centuries of medieval times it was November 11th, Martin’s day, which marked the beginning of winter, and of advent: the countdown of forty days to the shortest day of the year. On this day in the Netherlands it is a tradition for children to go from door to door carrying lanterns made from scooped-out turnips with candles in them. These simple lanterns carry a message: a reminder that during the long months of the northern European winter, when the earth appears to sleep, each living thing still carries within it the spark of light, the seed of new life that will awaken once more in the spring.

These little candles, these tiny sparks of the summer sun that stay alive to burn through the sleeping earth of winter, offer a more profound reminder: that the apparent end of life is not really an end. The precious flame still continues to burn, even when it is no longer visible to us. Our life, our very soul endures, even though it might change its form. And if sometimes we forget this truth, perhaps in those despairing moments when we imagine that we have nothing left to give, we can remember Martin’s gesture. All of our humanity, all of our compassion and our hope for the future, can be contained in just half a cloak, and warm us until another spring arrives.

Painting Saint Martin by Gustave Moreau

Little Spark

She is dearly loved by her mother. In all that Little Spark does, she feels her mother’s guiding hand and thoughtful attention. And the girl also loves her mother as much as she herself is loved. It is a quiet harmony of being: a harmony that comes to an abrupt and unwished-for end when, after a short illness, her mother dies.

From one day to the next Little Spark’s world changes forever. There are times when she feels that she needs to comfort her disconsolate father more than she herself receives the comfort which she as a child so needs and deserves. But things are to change still further, and the change is for the worse. Her father remarries soon enough. Perhaps too soon. Little Spark’s new stepmother is everything that her dear mother was not. No scrap of love or comfort comes from this stranger in her house, in her life. 

Instead, Little Spark finds herself sent downstairs to the cheerless kitchen, and there she must scrub the pots and pans and tend to the stove fire as if she were a common servant; which, to all intents and purposes, she has now become. Her father, if the truth be known, discovers all too late that he is rather intimidated by this doughty woman, and keeps silent over the treatment of his daughter.

Miracles happen. As she sits quietly weeping among the blackened pots and the even blacker soot and charred wood of the kitchen stove, a miracle happens to Little Spark. An ineffable essence, a shining form, appears before her. Again her world changes. She feels herself overwhelmed with an unnameable love, and although her tears flow, they are now tears of an inexpressible joy and hope for what might now come. Is this the spirit of her mother come to comfort her? Or some other being? Although no word is spoken, she knows that all her desires will now be answered. What the form of light offers to her is transformation.

And Little Spark transforms. From a girl dressed in servant’s rags she is now a radiant beauty, worthy of the hand of a prince of the land. And it is the prince who duly claims her hand and gives to her all love, honour and happiness in his palace, ‘forever after’. Well, we recognize this story, of course, as the story of Cinderella, which is the translation of the literal name ‘Little Spark’. The story endures through the generations as an evergreen fairy tale. But such stories retain their magic for a reason. In the story of Cinderella we can recognise a far older and deeper story: the story of us all.

Just as with Little Spark and her mother’s love, we also know an initial perfect bliss, a heavenly state. But we (or Eve, or Cinderella, or whatever name we give to the little spark that is the soul in these stories) must descend ‘downstairs’ to toil in the grease and grime of the ‘kitchen’ of the material world, in order to learn the hard and necessary things that will help us through worldly experience to progress. But there always is redemption, both in fairy stories and in the soul’s journey.

These eternal themes echo in our awareness. They travel through time to reach us, and they travel ‘in disguise’ as stories so that their inner meaning may be preserved. They continue to speak powerfully to us if we open ourselves to them. And perhaps now you might never read the story of Cinderella in quite the same way again!

Painting: Cinderella by Terri Windling

The Journey of Ambergris

It has a strange and rather unglamorous beginning in, of all places, the digestive tract of a sperm whale. When the whale expels this strange by-product of its oceanic menu, it rises to the surface, there to float upon the waves until, perhaps after many years of drifting, it eventually is washed up on some distant shore. But in these years of drifting, a miraculous transformation takes place. From a waxy and rather smelly lump, it undergoes a mysterious change of its own. It becomes one of the sweetest of scents, formerly prized in the making of the costliest perfumes. We know it as ambergris.

In the Near East, ambergris is burnt as an incense. But in some countries such as the United States, even the possession of ambergris is considered to be an unlawful offense due to the protection of the species from which it comes. Two years ago here in the Netherlands, a sperm whale was found stranded on the beach of the island of Texel. Over eighty kilograms worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were found in the animal.

This marvellous substance was even thought to have medicinal value, as a cure for a variety of ailments from headaches to epilepsy. In days gone by Dutch gentlemen were said to sprinkle some on their breakfast eggs, and so enabling the substance to make the journey from the whale’s to the human’s digestive system via the oceans of the world! 

I myself am lucky enough to have a few small grams of this precious substance, which I keep in a small covered pot. When I remove the lid, the released scent is astonishing, like the costliest perfume – which indeed it actually is! I rather wish that this post had a button that you, my reader, could click on which would allow you to share the experience with me. Not possible, I realise (but maybe Google are working on it, who knows?).

In the East the lotus is used as a symbolic way of illustrating the soul’s progress from darkness to light: the transforming progression of the lotus from the muddy river’s bed to emerge into the light as a beautiful bloom. Nature holds many such valuable lessons if we are open to them. Perhaps the journey of ambergris is also one such lesson. Adrift on the waves, a mysterious alchemy is worked upon the ambergris to transform it into the rarest of sweet perfumes.  The stir of the great ocean is all that is apparently needed to accomplish this magic, and like many a true transformation, it asks no effort, only time.

Painting: Scent of Ambergris, by John Singer Sargent

Sophia. the Spirit of Wisdom

"I called upon God, and Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, came unto me."

"I loved Her, and sought Her out from my youth, 

I desired to make Her my spouse.

I was a lover of Her beauty.

I loved Her above health and beauty, 

and chose to have Her above Light: 

for the Light that cometh from Her never fails."

"Sophia blesses the world with Supreme wisdom, 

and allows all people to realize their unity with God.

"She is the Supreme Spirit: All-knowing and sacred;

One, yet pervading many, subtle, ever-free, 

lucid, clear, and invincible.

"For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me: 

for in Her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, 

subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, 

loving the thing that is good, 

penetrating Intelligence which cannot be confounded, 

and always ready to do good.

"She is all-powerful, the witness of all, 

and found in those who are wise, pure-hearted, and humble.

"Sophia moves more easily than motion itself;

By reason of Her purity She permeates all things.

She is like a fine mist rising from the power of God,

The divine radiance streaming from the glory of the Almighty.

Nothing can stain Her immaculate purity.

"Though one, She becomes everything; 

from within herself, by Her own power, makes all things new.

"Age after age She enters into holy souls, 

making them perfect, and leading them back to God.

For God loves none but those 

who have made their home with Sophia.

"She is fairer than the sun, and greater than every constellation.

She is more radiant than the light of day

for day is overcome by night, 

but against Sophia 

no darkness can prevail."

"For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom."

*

From: The Wisdom of Solomon

Chapter 7 & 8

King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Piero della Francesca

The Quest of Isis

My Beloved, how I have searched for you.

Yesterday, as my Lord Ra kneeled

to touch the horizon,

I stood among the great river’s reeds.

The waters were high,

swelled with the tears I have shed for you.

Now Ra has again returned 

from his voyage through the nether world

and his radiance once more floods the heavens,

filling the gracious body of Nut with light.

And still I continue my search.

Where are you, my Beloved?

Nowhere can I find you,

and all the land feels as empty as my heart.

Were that it never had happened.

Cruel Set, our dark brother, flattered you,

and like all those who flatter, wished to be you.

And so you lowered yourself

into that treacherous box:

the perfectly-fitting box made even more perfect

by your beautiful body that still lies within,

sealed by dark arts and honeyed words.

Where must I search for you,

my beloved husband?

Where do you lie, sweet Osiris?

If you were abandoned to these waters

then it is these swollen waters that I must follow

and my guide will be my own footsteps

for they surely will grow lighter 

When they sense that I grow nearer to you.

I will follow these waters swollen with my tears

and note my lighter tread

northward to the lands of the great delta,

northward to the lands half-glimpsed in visions

northward along the coast to Byblos

and the miraculous tamarisk of my dreams.

*

The episode in the story of Isis which my prose poem relates concerns the events leading to the entrapment of Osiris by Set, the jealous brother of Isis and Osiris, and the subsequent search of Isis for her missing husband. Set desired to take over Osiris’ position as the principal god, and invited him to a feast. At the feast, Set revealed a box which he knew would fit Osiris perfectly, and invited Osiris to lie in it. As soon as Osiris had done so, Set sealed the box shut and threw it into the Nile. The box eventually drifted from the Nile delta into the Mediterranean Sea, finally coming to shore at Byblos on the northeast coast, where it became embedded in a tamarisk tree that formed one of the columns of a palace. Isis, desolate at the loss of Osiris, shed so many tears that it caused the Nile to flood. Her search eventually brought her to Byblos, and the remarkable tree which concealed the box in which her husband had become trapped.

This is the first part of the myth of Isis and her search for Osiris. On one level it of course makes a wonderful story, but the myth speaks powerfully on a deeper level. In the entrapment of Osiris is mirrored the story of the soul, and its entrapment in an incarnated material body. The Spirit (Isis in the myth) longs to be reunited with this body, for as with Isis and her beloved Osiris, Spirit and Soul are never complete without each other.

Painting Nile Reeds by Susan Elizabeth Wolding

The Angel of the Labyrinth

Resourceful Ariadne saw me not at all, although I am sure that she felt my presence as I glided silently at her shoulder. How ingeniously she wound the skein of thread that would be unwound by Theseus, there in the tortuous corridors of the Labyrinth. Ah, bold Theseus, claimed by myth as a hero for slaying the Minotaur that waited for his arrival at the heart of the winding ways. Hero indeed! The wretched monster already knew its own destiny, and needed only to await the arrival of the son of King Aegeus for it to be fulfilled.

I tell you that Ariadne’s deed was more heroic, providing as she did the means for Theseus’ return. And what was her reward? To be deserted by him on the island of Naxos, left behind like any castaway, to be rescued by a god who showed clever Ariadne more honour than he ever did.

All these things I have seen, for I am the witness of history, although history sees me not. Secretly I stand at the gate of every labyrinth, and as you enter the gate of your own labyrinth you will be sure to pass me. But you as well will not notice as I slip my skein into your hands. Unknowingly, you will begin to unwind it as you enter the turning ways. And at every turn it will be laid down, and every measure of it records the event which you experience. Here at this turn you made the decision to go either to the right or to the left, never being sure which path might be the right one to follow. Here farther along, you fell in love, and the path ahead changed for you because of this. And here, you suffered a loss, and the path changed direction once again.

All this is known, because all of these things, these life events, are recorded on the unwinding skein as they happen. Look closely: you can see them written on the skein. All which you experience is faithfully set down, a true document of your passage inwards. 

But what you cannot know is what will be written on the part of the skein which has yet to be unwound, because you can only discover that by unwinding it. And you can only unwind it by travelling farther on your journey. And since you cannot see what is ahead of you, you must have trust. You can read readily enough what has been written as it unwinds behind you. But what is yet to be written is negotiable, and up to you, and dependent upon the paths of choice which lie ahead of you in the labyrinth. And I, who have wound the skein which you now unwind, will help you to make those choices if, like Ariadne, you allow me to help you to reach the labyrinth’s heart.

Painting: Labyrinth, by Jake Baddeley.