A Meditation for Taking Down the Christmas Tree

"A Silent Promise"

A poem by Jay Emerson Johnson

Light comes back

as it always does

just before Christmas Day

like finding a treasured keepsake

forgotten in attic recesses

and I start to think about Hoovering up

brittle evergreen needles,

fingering the stubborn ones

out from a wooly carpet’s fibers.

Light comes back slowly

tracing an ancient arc

across the winter sky

and I kneel on hardwood

straining to scoop up

a stray ornament

from a dusty corner

just out of reach

with sunlight

dappling my vision.

Light comes back

with a promise

silent as the stars –

This simple, tender flesh

covering our hands

wrinkling our knees

layering our faces

shall be seen

revealed as a divine gift

for this world

indeed, an epiphany.

A meditation for the season

(Pre)Occupied

a poem by Jay Emerson Johnson

Few have been this preoccupied with tents

since you recklessly pitched one among us.

I would have chosen something more stable,

not quite so porous and vulnerable,

safe, secure, readily significant,

and missed the whisper of evening breezes,

the restless susurration of canvas,

and that one appearing in the shadows,

light flinting off flesh in a fading sun,

fireflies dancing in the night,

rousing my longing

to step into your own

luminous darkness.

See Jay's blog: peculiarfaith.com .

A Meditation on Connectedness

"In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true."

--attributed to Buddha

On the Idea of "Incarnation"

A meditation by Fahkruddin Iraqi:

Although you may not know it,

If you love anyone, it is Him you love;

If you turn your head in any direction,

it is toward Him you turn.

Let go of everything,

Completely lose yourself on this path,

Then your every doubt will be dispelled.

With absolute conviction you'll cry out--

I am God!

I am the one I have found!

In the light I praised you

And never knew it.

In the dark I slept with you

And never knew it.

I always thought that I was me,

But no, I was you

and never knew it.

(from The Essential Gay Mystics, ed. by Andrew Harvey)

About Wolves

"Wolves may feature in our myths, our history, and our dreams, but they have their own future, their own loves, their own dreams to fulfill."

--Anthony Miles

"Throughout the centuries we have projected on to the wolf the qualities we most despise and fear in ourselves."

--Barry Lopez

"We have doomed the Wolf not for what it is, but for what we have deliberately and mistakenly perceived it to be..the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer..which is, in reality no more than a reflexed images of ourself."

--Farley Mowat

Wolf at Beaver Creek

by Mike Burwell

(from The Cartography of Water)

This gray shape before me

not any known thing.

From twenty feet, my eyes slide

into other eyes, full

of wild streaks of darkening sky.

The creek rushes in its small calling.

He moves first, turns from the trail,

trots off, turns, stares,

trots, stops, stares

three more times before the willows

swallow him. I am rooted under clouds

ripping in winds too high to hear,

that other eye heaving in the heart.

"Wolf is the Grand Teacher. Wolf is the sage, who after many winters upon the sacred path and seeking the ways of wisdom, returns to share new knowledge with the tribe. Wolf is both the radical and the traditional in the same breath. When the Wolf walks by you-you will remember."

--Robert Ghost Wolf

From "My Glance Is Clear Like a Sunflower"

From "My Glance Is Clear Like a Sunflower"

by Fernando Pessoa

I believe in the World as in a daisy
Because I see it. But I don't think about it
Because thinking is not understanding...


The World was not made for us to think about
(To think is to be eye-sick)
But for us to look at and be in tune with...


I have no philosophy: I have senses...
If I speak of Nature, it's not because I know what Nature is,
But because I love it, and that's why I love it,
For a lover never knows what he loves,
Why he loves or what love is...



Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not to think...


(translated by Alberto Caeiro)

Some quotes from Wayne Dyer

"Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you."

--Wayne Dyer

Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wayne_dyer.html