Heart and Conflict

Heart and Conflict

Sitting in morning sun

 this April spring day

waiting for words of tribute

 for our teacher's departing..

 Friday trips to the Senior Center
for those twenty eight years

there wearing his exampled past..

From a lifetime of preparing 

 weekly word gifts rise and express..

Morning sun finding breeze

a bumblebee just passed and

the grass hints of green..

Our teacher's mentor spoke

of a past not dead

and not even past..
This presence of Now 
finds our heart..

And of the heart:

when writing disturbs 

the whiteness of a page
this reminds us of conflict

 the heart with itself..

The sun's warmth dispels 

April's chill and we 

remember that whiteboard

after Colleen's erasing..

With new whiteness

the heart cleansed for Now

of the words and maps
of Yoknapatapha..

Those many conflicts 

with itself..

As he departs this morning

for his Liberty Heights home

we wish him the freedom

that name implies..

Doves in the distance

spring birds chirping

a steady traffic rumble..

Perhaps we know Now

our heart's conflicts

are simply made 
of itself...

Our best wishes 
to you Jesse,
our Teacher 
and Friend...

Charlie Coon
April 24th, 2015
Friday!

(see this and other of Charlie's
writing at:  polarityinplay.blogspot.com )

Black Hole Awakening

Black Hole Awakening

More than a mystery of nature
these severe compressions show us
the extremes of the seeming separate self
of the ego triumphant..
Not separate though but as we
 embedded in consciousness whole..
The black hole waiting for evaporation
and  new awakening
as a wave in the ocean
as we in our longing 
find Real composition...

(Imagine the scene: highly advanced civilisations get enormous amounts of energy from black holes, be it extracting it from collapsed stars or making artificial mini-holes that power spaceships. How feasible might it actually be to tap these cosmic behemoths for power one day? Black holes are stars that have burnt out and collapsed under their own gravity to an infinitesimally small point in space – a singularity. Inside the so-called event horizon, even light is trapped by a huge gravitational pull. But that view evolved once Stephen Hawking and others brought quantum physics into the mix. Hawking showed in the 1970s that black holes should emit energy from their boundaries in the form of radiation produced by quantum fluctuations of empty space itself. Eventually the black hole radiates itself away – it evaporates.(excerpts from BBC article, December 3, 2013 by Philip Ball)

Window

The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window - 
Written in 1944 by Thomas Merton

Because my will is simple as a window

And knows no pride of original birth,

It is my life to die, like glass, by light:

Slain in the strong rays of the bridegroom sun.

Because my love is simple as a window

And knows no shame of original dust, 

I longed all night, (when I was visible) for dawn my death: 

When I would marry day, my Holy Spirit: 

And die by transsubstantiation into light.

For light, my lover, steals my life in secret.

I vanish into day, and leave no shadow 

But the geometry of my cross, 

Whose frame and structure are the strength 

By which I die, but only to the earth, 

And am uplifted to the sky my life.

When I became the substance of my lover, 

(Being obedient, sinless glass) 

I love all things that need my lover's life, 

And live to give my newborn Morning to your quiet rooms, 

-Your rooms, that would be tombs, 

Or vaults of night, and death, and terror, 

Fill with the clarity of living Heaven, 

Shine with the rays of God's Jerusalem:

O shine, bright Sions!

Because I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit, 

The sun rejoices in your jail, my kneeling Christian, 

(Where even now you weep and grin 

To learn, from my simplicity, the strength of faith).

Therefore do not be troubled at the judgements of the thunder, 

Stay still and pray, still stay, my other son, 

And do not fear the armies and black ramparts 

Of the advancing and retreating rains: 

I'll let no lightning kill your room's white order.

Although it is the day's last hour, 

Look with no fear: 

For the torn storm lets in, at the world's rim, 

Three streaming rays as straight as Jacob's ladder:

And you shall see the sun, my Son, my Substance, 

Come to convince the world of the day's end, and of the night, 

Smile to the lovers of the day in smiles of blood; 

For though my love, He'll be their Brother, 

My light - the Lamb of their Apocalypse.

Seamless

Seamless

Each new day brings a new sun's seamless dawn

which will be torn today in this place and that..

Planning and doing seemingly rents smoothness..

Then to recall our dawn experience

 joyful recall repairs and heals and restores

the seamless new day...

Needed repairs

Needed repairs

Present now and waiting

at Bud's Muffler 

for an axle repair

and tire patching..

The body shop laughter and cheer

seal auto wounds which appear

in the never-ending dying

of our moving machines..

Might this dying itself

be repaired by

more attention to

wind and sun...

Light of common day

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. ---Excerpt from William Wordsworth,     536. Ode. Intimations of Immortality

Resurrection

Resurrection

Now the empty tomb

a way station 

on our paths

finding each one

her true Self..

Not separate

not a thing

not a place

simply I am..

A new emptiness

joyful transparency

which might appear

in some place

perhaps Galilee

or other place..

I am awakening:

I am no place

I am everyplace...