Light in my closet

Light in my closet

the tomb for my fear

at the head of the string

upon whose tail I swing;

you are the welcomed, watted-daylight

scaring the ghosts of my night

in this room where clothes hang

soothing my frightened face

Light in my closet

artist of shadows about

you are friend to my secrets

coaxing them out from the dark

protecting the souls of children

guarding their Child within

Light in my closet

announcing safeness to my my breast

your faithful, watchful caring

grants freedom under duress.

The masks of love which hound me

are excluded from this sacred den.

There's freedom under your wattage.

There's warmth in your caress.

*Whereas fallen love is selfish, love of God is expansive.  Fallen fears are obsessive, true fear is edifying.

-Eliezer Shore

*The entire Torah can be understood in this way; the laws and rituals help define our relationship with God. Negative commandments preserve the purity of the soul, while positive ones direct its energies into spiritual channels.  "Do not stray to another field, my daughter," they tell the soul, "turn not away from here" Ruth 2:8). 

-Eliezer Shore

i see your face

a shadow pressed upon the ret'na

of my eye

you sail like a jellyfish

gliding cross the pane

your presence assuring

like sacraments given to the sick

with my turn toward darkness

you are gone

*Mrs. Jones in the Morning

out there

rake in hand

on guard against the wind

circling her

pile of laves

from my window

I watch her

draw me 

from my prayers

to pray

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*a blessing--

he who had come

to bless her

 red wind rose

gently blowing

his eyes 

closed

he bowed

under her raised hand

and left

leaving her pregnant

in the middle

as well as 

all around

in every direction

imaginable

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap,

The Hard Men of Hard Looks

The hard men of hard looks

lie shamelessly to themselves

peering mean into the camera

and the nervous world beyond

Shit sneaks through their drawers

like sweat filling their T-shirts

as fear drills through their hearts

and rises as hard

The hard are boys crying

for some gentle, masculine touching

with strength in the holding

assurance in the standing

The hard men drop early

succumbing to Death's reaching

when Life's whats the wanting

and Love's more than cunting

needing smiles on their frowning

and truth in their laughter

that the hardness be transforming

for the youth tagging behind them

*The fall of man is understood to mean a fall into the physical, from a body of light to "garments of skin" (Genesis 3:21). And when Adam - whose being embraced all of creation - fell, so did everything else.

-Eliezer Shore

*Every relationship is a relationship God, but when that essential truth is hidden, the external world takes on an independent reality that deceives and attracts the attention. 

-Eliezer Shore

*The goal of all spiritual work is to detach the seeker from preoccupation with the outer trappings of reality and redirect the energies inward, to that place where infinity touches the soul.  The fallen can never equal the power and ecstasy of the being in its source.  Whereas fallen love is selfish, love of God is expansive.  Fallen fears are obsessive, true fear is edifying.

-Eliezer Shore

i view myself 

in the mirror

unsure who i see

beyond the flesh

beyond the glass

beyond the scarred head

the sutured hand

the flaking feet

unsure 

what the color speaks

the eyes say

the lips whisper

just know i'm here

viewing a "me" 

this moment

with questions 

and regrets

loves and sins

the mirror can't behold

some "me"

beyond reflections

and passing gazes

and my in-spections

mystery

*So much of spiritual work seems to revolve around deeds that quickly become routine.

-Eliezer Shore

*Ritual and repetition are at the heart of every religious tradition.  Even the most inspired seeker may soon find himself aground in the shallow waters of daily observance.  It's known that the essence of a spiritual work is to come to an ever-renewing vision of God.  Although the heart and mind search  for this, and the soul cries out for it, the tradition maintains its stoic insistence on the necessity of the discipline.  Where, then, is the voice of the Living God?

-Eliezer Shore

the Word

most precious heard

alights like snow

floating down to earth

gently quiet

and packaged tight

covering lands

of grass and stones

with freshness

and moistens

the hardened ground

for Spring

Tis, "Come"

*Devotion and sacrifice do not reduce our energy but intensify it.  Love and compassion toward the other, readiness to accept him as he is, with all his short comings and faults, ailments and old age, help us accept ourselves as well, with all our weaknesses and shortcomings, with a feeling of remorse, of love, and compassion.  Love and compassion are not just private and individual experiences.  Neither are they necessarily impersonal manifestations of a universal, vibrant movement.  In some unexplained way they are both, at one and and the same time.

-Ilam Amit

*Vincent van Gogh's battle with poverty, his alcoholism and psychological torment, and his suicide are widely known.  Yet it was not his suffering and the dark anguish of his life that made van Gogh a great artist. It was his capacity to create extraordinary beauty in the midst of his personal hell.

-Val Thorpe

*What is truly astonishing about his[van Gogh's] story are not his psychological failings but his remarkable vision and hope.

-Val Thorpe

 *Where sympathy is restored, life is renewed.

-Vincent van Gogh

snagging a spot of silence

for Silence

the silence of hearing

silence looking about

the silence of self 

is pleasure most scarce

one grabs for the treasure

a waif bear in hands 

clinging to the pleasure

till grace fills the space

and smiles up the face

as the treasures spill forth

to the hole in the soul

the spots a longing

a foundling

a babe upon a step

awaiting the loving 

embracing the nurturance

welcoming the Grace

*Our responsibilities are derived from our daily situation, from the people around us and those whom we may encounter occasionally.  Our awareness and the inner freedom we experience help us listen to the inner voice that points out our obligations: the voice of conscience.

-Ilan Amit

*Our obligation toward the other, as I understand it, does not stem from moral precepts, even though such precepts have an important role to play in our common life - our tradition, culture, and state. Our obligation toward the other is founded on a spontaneous feeling of love and compassion that we experience toward the other, toward our children, parents, partners, siblings, and friends.  We may also experience compassion and love toward a stranger whose troubled glance we have just met. When we become aware of the love and compassion surging within us we see that we are not alone, not disconnected and separate individuals.  Despite having separate bodies we are, in a sense, parts of a single soul.

-Ilan Amit

Ah

i.

slow motion

it happened

till suggestion became movement

and his body waved gracious

salacious

with phallic seduction

ii.

"The rape

the blood

the scream"

the boy at school he knew

iii.

him

the victim/the victimizer

iv.

no questions

no answers

just on-talk of wonder

when fear induced me

and chased him away

*People change, if at all, as a result of age and life experience, and not because of deliberate efforts to change.  With time we come to understand that we have to give up the hope of a change, and be ready to accept ourselves as we are, with all our deficiencies and drawbacks.  The key is not in the drive to change or improve ourselves, but in being ready to live with ourselves, to befriend ourselves, as Socrates puts it.

-Ilan Amit

*The only sensible attitude is to give up worrying about the next moment, to let the natural process take its course.  There is no need to measure or compare this present moment in length and intensity to any other.  At this moment only the present exists; and it is incomparable to anything else.  Two or twenty flashes of illumination are not better than one single flash.

-Ilan Amit 

he came like midnight

blending dark with dark

on a night without moon

he slipped into my head

heavy with the nothings of day

to find a niche to tickle me

like subtle music rubbing notes

o'er the sore spots of my soul

he came like music's balm

in the night-time of my dreaming

for some love to hold me right

he soothed me to a a sweeter bed

*We have too accept that the outcome of inner work is not in our hands.  We cannot guarantee the outcome to ourselves or to others.

-Ilan Amit

*Renunciation means admitting to our innermost selves that we can neither guarantee grace nor be worthy of it.  Yet we accept to stay in our incapacity and vulnerability, partial and incomplete, aware of the finitude of our being.

-Ilan Amit

hollow-wed

i freeze at the sight

of hollowed eyes in heads

drained of touch and color

blank in magic and passion

but like burnt-out lighthouses

cast emptiness across the paths

of other hollowed heads

hollows, filled with dread

with put-on strengths

and cruel backings of drugs

rage in cold stares and impotent dares

with smothered feelings of the numb

their motored mouths and limbs

press their robotics against the goad

of green-back faces of ink

for the vomiting of self and worth

i wail yet my tears fall dry

upon the un-tilled and barren soil

where Hope might bud a change

but these eyes behold no green

'cept cash and Envy's heated hand

that scorch the sockets of these dead

yet, weeping tears must douse the land

and coax the buried Spirit-seed

to break the crust en-caging it

and trust the Sun to renew eyes

*The cross has always been a symbol of conflict, and a principle of selection, among men.  The Faith tells us that it is by the willed attraction or repulsion exercised upon souls by the Cross that the sorting of the good seed from the bad, the separation of the chosen element from the unutilizable 

ones, is accomplished at the heart of mankind.  Wherever the Cross appears, unrest and antagonisms are inevitable...

It  is perfectly true that the Cross means going beyond the frontiers of the sensible world and even, in a sense, breaking with it. The final stages of the ascent to which it calls us compels is to cross a threshold, a critical point, where we lose touch with the zone of the realities of the senses.  That final "excess", glimpsed and accepted from the first steps, inevitably puts everything we do in a special light and gives it a particular significance...

-Teilhard de Chardin

*...reconciling ones faith with the existence of evil remains one of the primary challenges of believers in many religions.

-G. Willow Wilson

we write back and forth

with greetings of friendship

at holidays, yearly come, yearly gone

while longing for one

our smile is broad

viewing a signature of old

but wait we will

till our eyes spy another

unsure of our bonding

while longing for one

we melt into our ages

our flesh altering with time

doing the predictable ev'ryday

till a face stands at our door

a stranger-friend ringing from our porch

awaiting an answer 

unsure of our bonding

while longing for one

so how shall i smile

as i stare at the door

unsure of our bonding

since the longing is gone?

*When death is perceived as extinction, death dominates life, and paralyzes creative action. When death is seen as a crossroad, we can anticipate it many times in our lives, by consciously handing our lives in trust to the Mystery we know intuitively as the Source and Ground of our existence.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

*Every crossroad implies a cross.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

*The cross remains as witness to one historic crossroads, where the cross as instrument of torture became symbol of a great rescue of the human race.  Christian theology has found in the mystery of the cross on which Jesus died an inexhaustible well of meaning.  A medieval Latin author wrote: "Crux stat dum volvitur mundus" (The cross stands there as the world turns).  What accounts for the transformation of the cross from reminder of gross cruelty to sign of transcendent love is the way Jesus of Nazareth dealt with the crossroads in his own life.  His test, as ours, had to do with power and relationships.  He could have joined, perhaps, even led, a group of insurrectionists aiming to liberate themselves from the Roman yoke by their imitation of the Roman means.  Instead he chose another way, one that went to the heart of the matter and revealed the potential of love and truth at the crossroads.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

i recall the tears of' '68

Pelle and his Fa

absent mine

in a theater dark

a single beam of images

broadened wide the silver screen

'pon which mem'ries dreamed

playing in still succession

as i wiped my face

each tear's lost remembrance

fell free from needled ducts

to roll into this night

when dad slips into my mind 

once more

he is here...and we...

the tears having fed

the growing need of us

*The myths and symbols of the heroic change as does everything else is history.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

*When death is perceived as extinction, death dominates life, and paralyzes creative action.  When death is seen as a crossroad, we can anticipate it many times in our live , by consciously handing our lives in trust to the Mystery we know intuitively as the source and Ground of our existence.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

Questions

Are these but so many meanderings

so many waters coursing 'pon pounded rocks

so many streams flowing deep in Mother Earth?

Are these but so much ink dried on yellowed skins

so many parchments witnessing the age-long quest

so many hands penning tales of journeyed souls?

Are these but so much clay pressed upon the wheel

so much mud spun into the shapes of Man

so many palms molding pots for drinking Life?

I know not but wonder so, observing all

peering into the heart of matter's presenting stuff

the stuff my life-long is shaped by... and by.

O God/Maker, Redeemer, Word of God, Son

nestled in the flesh of every womb-borne child

speak your glad-tidings that I trust may know

may know questions whose answer is You.

*...buying has become a form of entertainment, a sport, almost an end in itself.  Consumerism is a disease that indicates a terrible poverty of spirit, one in which the quality of life is bartered for sheer quantity of goods and money.

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

*We have the possibility of exchanging the  dependence on force as a means of providing security for a way of stewardship and hospitality.  What we have held in ownership we must now hold in trust for one another, valuing hospitality as we value our very lives.  There is a Gaelic expression that says it all: "It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."

-Mary Evelyn Jegen

Clowns

All life is sad:

that's why there're clowns

It was as if clowns were born to die

laying Life to rest with funereal chants

while the living dirged on Miserere-cants

But these are fools like Christ himself

laughing through the sealed up tomb

with alien names and greasing paint

tickling pain hiding behind your face

Ecstasy

Is it not like little child

upon a rocker-horse

a steeple-chase knight

bursting with play

in wild Exuberance

joying out, hollering

"Look, Daddy, look!"

while Laughter flies free

and Smiles stretch glees

with generations of saints

who Candor knows, swells

with soul-pealed bells

in the presence of God

ever present to each hair

ever laughing with each child?

*At kairos [the end-time], what may be the hardest thing to realize is that we already have everything we need.

-William Bryant Logan

*Men raised in traditional masculine ways usually have trouble with interpersonal relationships and tend to see people mainly in terms of social roles, rather than as individual persons.

-Allan B. Chinen

*Some tales are about weak, submissive men, lacking self confidence and authority, whose task at midlife is to reclaim their heroic, masculine energises.  These stories are deeply relevant to two groups of men today.  The first are wounded men, injured by traumatic childhoods, depression or racial oppression, who have never been able to exercise their strengths.  The second are men who have learned to value the feminine and to honor the goddess, but who have in the process forgotten their masculine energy.  The task of both groups of men at midlife is to reclaim the male fierceness they neglected in youth.

-Allan B. Chinen

*Teenagers are often exasperating to parents, but if parents remind themselves that the turmoil is normal and time-limited, and the teenagers eventually grow out of it, the difficulties are easier to bear.

-Allan B. Chinen

Eulogy for our dead  sons

Sound taps! Ring the dormant bells!

Wail aloud! Burn the buildings down!

Pierce heaven's shield with mourning!

Gather round the corpse of the slain

powdered and painted for a party!

Clandom's day of remembrance

with curses and tears to be shed.

Our cold heroes sleep past dreams;

frozen in youth, they lay dead.

all promises ceased with their heart

hope vanished at the hour of their passing.

God hears the weak fists pounding

sees revenge kick ass about town.

The brothers' lives survive in red

rivulets of blood drying on a curb.

Tiny notes appear in the press:

Young man killed outside his home.

A numberless death counted by the FBI

for a report on crime and statistical health.

Fire, then, shots that "honor" these dead;

bring one more to the funeral home. 

*The midlife passage is a psychological crossroads of utmost importance, rivaling adolescence in pain and promise.  The transition from the first half of life to the second provokes multiple changes, and one of the most dramatic involves men and women switching roles and crossing paths.

-Allan B. Chinen

*Men raised in traditional masculine ways usually have trouble with interpersonal relationships and tend to see people mainly in terms of social roles, rather than as individual persons.

-Allan B. Chinen

Sorrow's Children

No laughter upon the grass
nor chasing about the streets
with fits of glee, so free
but eyes stretched deep without tears
elongated from years of pain
of thoughtless "Don'ts" and "No, you can'ts":
killers of the children's joys.

See them dragging their bodies about
in search of souls dead gone
as their chins scrape the ground
on their road to growth

Play escapes their steps
in the suns of their childhood

Now they mope toward family life
to dampen spirits shouting
from their childhood lips

Sorrow has won the day, the night
as sadness chains the eyes, the hands
the children's feet that ache to dance
the round of life with God's piped chant

*Tecum

With you

inside

a steady stream

of living light

we meet

in the presence

of nothing

more than

yes

we welcome

each other

unceasingly

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*so

so

morning

a

breeze

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*When approached with care, watchfulness, and sensitivity, the crossroads can be a place of promise and possibility, presenting a test that, once met, can lead to a renewed existence on another level.

Parabola/Crossroads/editors

*"Conscience," after all, is derived from words meaning, "to feel together", not simply to talk side-by-side.

-William Bryan Logan

upon visiting an old photograph

gazing into your eyes 

these many years hence

i see a pain blinded to me

when i then shot your face

your sad eyes weep dryly

tears, hearts break upon

your lips wailing, "free me"

as i shackled you in my frame

if only i saw what's now beheld

i'd smash the lens chaining  you in hell

*Sooner or later, each of our journeys arrives at a point of change, challenge, and choice, where we can go in a new direction.  We have arrived at a crossroads, that place where all things are met and where all things become possible.

-Parabola/Crossroads/editors

*When approached with care, watchfulness, and sensitivity, the crossroads can be a place of promise and possibility, presenting a test that, once met, can lead to a renewed existence on another level.

-Parabola/Crossroads/editors

Walk Naked       

Walk naked 'round the slumbering lake;

feel the breeze dress you in cooling silk;

the sun warms the pores of your welcoming flesh;

lay in grass like the bee seeking nectar;

roll in chlorophyll greening the soles of your feet;

whistle as if whittling a spirit on the air;

sing like a bird flirting with the neighbor's goose;

let your lungs open to freshness

like a babe born to new Earth;

be the womb receiving the Sperm of God

rejoicing at the graced-life of your soul;

plunge deep into the water's darkness
deep into its subterranean holds;

meet her fish and watered life abundant;

speak her tongue with the creatures dwelling there;

laugh midst the chatter of the bubbly voices

that their scales feel the sensations

of your humorous, tangential flesh;

arise from the deep

embracing the rolling sea

skipping like a chipmunk 

hoarding seeds for a meal.

Ah, body, my body! 

great gift to wondrous me 

I taste your freedom in this precious moment

I embrace the newness alive in me.

*Throughout the world, whenever a group of people has not had the option of moving to search for something better, there have been aspects of the landscape to which they have pinned their sense of self, and of community.  Many of these have become  known as sacred places because of their importance in the culture, which often leads to their being incorporated in various religious traditions; but the relationship between self and place is essentially secular and so simple that we often overlook it.

-Ron Matous

*As the world shrinks and we become more mobile, the first casualty of our lifestyle is the sense of belonging to a place. ...When one's connection to the land is represented by a title deed rather than memories, the connection is tenuous at best.

-Ron Matous

*...all attachment is mad; but surely if one is going to be attached to life itself one cannot help but be attached to the place where it occurs.

-Ron Matous

cheap wine

your carcasses lay dispirited

emptied of life near the empty folk

in search of life in a glass

of quick highs that drown

suff'ring and multi-pains

and nightmares of a gone-time

with veins full for a moment

three swigs with a friend or more

that laughter might fly

and gurgled talk supply

what's missing all the time.

you are witness to this

laying drunk on the ground.

*We are creatures who need a sense of place.

-Ron Matous

*To be at peace, we also need a sense of home, of belonging to a particular place in a particular time in history.

-Ron Matous

Rootedness: the positive relation of place to life; the dominance of a place or people in our lives.

-Ron Matous

when will i be naked before You

lay bear my nude self to You

Your Spirit eats me, heart and all

chewing my innards to soul-grain

for planting in fields near and far

i saunter like one possessed by You

throwing off refuse like rag-pickers' trash

a restless bear sighting fish down steam

i roam, eyeing the prize still out of sight

i long a Yes to say, free of my sins

but muster tainted ones like before

and You're here

coaxing the beset of me

yet

*We locate ourselves in time as well as in space, with the self at the center no matter which direction we look.

-Ron Matous

*We are creatures who need a sense of place.

-Ron Matous

Awakening

I.

On a recessed and murky wall
the slate shadow of a lone ballerina stood
waiting to wed her anima and animus
hid beneath her ruffled skirt.

Questions arose from the shadows
during her wait:
what occurred when I was young?
when did I become someone?

Was I an item on a grocery list
something rushed home to refrigerate
a child my parents chose to flagellate?
Is this how I fell out of love?

Am I this wall or it a part of me?
I hold the masculine
but my "me" maps other memories

II.

Yearning to be touched by the masculine sprite
in regions her psyche long suppressed
she faced the truth beneath her dress

Then dancing upon shattered stone and rock
her wobbly feet choreographed her release
forming movements in swirls of grey
till the red morn rose on the eastern rise
spilling light into her awakening world
warming her body to the presence of Love



*Jerusalem is a mystery, which may be why people embellish it with so much that is subjective.  People can never leave a mystery alone.  They cannot stand in front of it and let it be.  They cannot stand in front of the unknown.  They always make something else out of it, something it is not.  They bring to it their expectations, their dreams, their books, their Judaism, their Islam, their Christianity. They fill it and fill it until is all filled up.  And then they look about and see the Jerusalem they themselves have created.
-Martin Lev


*The cell is the guardian of solitude, while silence is its inspiration.
-Wayne Teasdale


*The primary, enduring inner effect of monastic life, of the whole claustral milieu, is to draw the person into the dynamic actuality of the present moment, where God finds us.  We must learn to become present to God and to others in each moment.  Just as a flower opens to the energy and warmth of the sun, so must we gently, gradually open to the grace and love of God.  Openness is one  of the most important skills a monk or anyone can learn.
-Wayne Teasdale

I.

What's there to believe
sitting before videos of canned biographies

When I look into the tragedy of life
of life lost on blank minds pretending to survive
is Tupac Shakur the only wreck amongst the black fold
or Michael Jackson, white-boy, damaged by the color green

I needed affection but affection was denied
tho denial never banished the affection I sought
but surely denials infected my thoughts

Now I'm an old man peeing on himself
yellowing my legs with more than the sperm of youth

I am in and out, a depletion sitting side the empty road
damaging struggles raging within my gut
sucking milk from The Abundant Breasts

II.

Lusting parents want sweat from their lads

It's difficult to know when you're growing up
without voice or heart and blind demands
your time and tensions skewed by wants of the poor

Where is hope when your mind's tied to absence
and needed bonds foregone as if religion
when pretenses of meaning pour from twisted lips
and ears open to love are waxed with noisy distractions

Business substitutes for intimate conversations

Hearts become poisoned with material exchange
when what's truly needed by the human searching
are intangible possessions purchased by caring hands

We see but are snared into the desire for image
experiencing fame and toys and pains of exclusion
but God's present in our moments of darkness
always Bread awaiting the hungry prophet



*One thing is certain:people leave their homelands because life there is difficult to bear.
-Czeslaw Milosz


*...whoever looks for happiness in distant lands must be prepared for disillusionment or even for the doubtful reward of one who jumps from the frying pan into the fire.
-Czeslaw Milosz


*..the pain we feel at a given moment is more real than the pain we may endure in the future.  This earth will with all its charms and beauty is after all the earth of the "exiles of Eve."
-Czeslaw Milosz

the tears  of charlie

his life unheard, now shared                              
for ears perked open to hear his tales
his truth gathered in his breast years long:
these now tease words from his trusting lips
lips that had long awaited someone
to enter the garden of his heart
roam therein, lay upon the lea
picnic beneath his bleeding tree

charlie's tears leaked quietly
strong as joyous drops
assured that he was heard
'neath once buried words
and in his friend-padded embrace
of the revelations of his heart
he was set free to be
the the story-teller of his life



*...the only remedy against the loss of orientation is to create anew one's own North, East, West and South and posit in that new space a Witebsk or a Dublin elevated to the second power.  What has been lost is recuperated on a higher level of vividness and presence.
-Czeslaw Milosz


*Exile is a test of internal freedom and that freedom is terrifying.  Everything depends upon our own resources, of which we are mostly unaware and yet we make decisions assuming our strength will be sufficient.  The risk is total, not assuaged by the warmth of a collectivity where the second rate is usually tolerated, regarded as useful and even honored.  Now to win appears in a crude light, for we are alone and loneliness is a permanent affliction of exile.  Once Friedrich Nietzsche exalted the freedom of height, of loneliness, of the desert.  Freedom of exile is of that lofty sort, though it is imposed by circumstances and,therefore, deprived of bathos.  A brief formula may encapsule the outcome of that struggle with our own weakness: exile destroys, but if it fails to destroy you, it makes you stronger.
-Czeslaw Milosz