Category: Poems

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Laughing with God a poem by Hafiz

Two Giant Fat People (by Hafiz a 14thC Persian poet and mystic see links at the end for details)

God and I have become
Like two giant fat people
Living in a tiny boat.

We keep
Bumping into each other
And laughing.

Image generated by AI

From Read the Spirit A review of Daniel Ladinsky’s A Year with Hafiz: Daily Contemplations.

“‘In the 19th Century, (Ralph Waldo) Emerson wrote that one of Hafiz’s greatest gifts was “his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics into which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles—that the mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and revered, and therefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion.”

Below a blog post reflecting on the poem. Well worth reading.

Two Giant Fat People

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Poems by Angelus Silesius OFM,  1624 – 1677

Red Rose with raindrops by K Marsh

These are two lovely, contemplative poems by Angelus Silesius, a 17th century Franciscan whose theology has similarities with that of Meister Eckhart, the 14th century Dominican mystic who said:  ‘God is God and has no why. God has no why but yet he is the why of everything.’

The rose:

The rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms. It does not pay attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen.

The heart:

Thy heart receives thy God and all that with Him goes when it expands towards Him as does an opening rose.

K Marsh    

Text & Photo ©K Marsh

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I Am That I Am

Is-ness’s recognition by Am-ness is expressed in the Ocean and Wave.  

Existence self-reflected by Awareness; Presence self-recognised by Knowing.  

The Ocean is I; Am, the Wave; simply a modulation of One.  

From which, in which and to which One shall return to One.  

Never two, even in multiplicity.  

The spirit of any expression beholds both rest and movement; at its depths is stillness yet as this, the source of all activity.  

Thus each utterance of phenomena is a sonorous tolling invitation to recognise its reality.  

The wave was, is, shall ever and only be the Ocean.  

There is not no self, there is simply no separate self; there is only Self-self, I-i; Ocean-wave.  

Ocean, Wave, Current; in trinitarian coexistence. 

Text and Photo ©️Jamie Robson https://jamierobson.com

Inspired by Exodus 3:14

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Shalom

We had wandered.

All over the place.

We came to John.

Listening to him, talking to him,

Fed the hunger, the need inside.

A way station. Respite. But not home.

The yearning persisted.

When Jesus appeared and John said:

“Look, the Lamb of God.”

We just knew.

We followed him,

And sat and listened,

And drank in his Spirit, his life,

The hope, the joy: his shalom.

Wholeness of being beckoned us

On a journey into belonging;

The healing of our minds;

Peace to our hurting souls.

Love that reaches deep enough

All the way in.

What do I want?

I have sought many things,

And been angry, disgruntled and resentful.

But my want led me to my true desire,

Where what I want, really want, became Jesus.

And nothing else mattered.

Not really.

Not when you arrive home forever.

© Angela Scott 2024

Photo
Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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We See Differently at Night

We see differently at night

Shadows fall in dark corners

And then the moon appears

Bright, round but silently

  Oh, so silently.

We hear differently at night

Small noises sound louder

And then the owl appears

Flying low but silently

  Oh, so silently.

We touch differently at night

Softly, afraid to make a sound

Light footsteps on the ground

Each foot, light and softly

 Oh, so silently.

We smell differently at night

Ground smells damp and wet

Breathe deeply with each step

breaths momently pause

  Oh, so silently.

We taste differently at night

Our lips savour the taste

We drink the silent moment

And we stop and wait

  Oh, so silently.

We believe differently at night

Our quiet souls begin to see

Our minds and ears stop hearing

And we reach out to God

  Oh, so silently.

© Poem and Photo by Ann Ridout

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There

There 

There, in that other world, what waits for me? 
What shall I find after that other birth?     
No stormy, tossing, foaming, smiling sea, 
          But a new earth. 

No sun to mark the changing of the days, 
No slow, soft falling of the alternate night, 
No moon, no star, no light upon my ways, 
        Only the Light. 

No grey cathedral, wide and wondrous fair, 
That I may tread, where all my fathers trod. 
Nay, nay, my soul, no house of God is there, 
        But only God. 

Mary Coleridge 1861-1907

Mary Coleridge is a very interesting person, perhaps not as well known as she should be. Known for “the rare gift of being in love with the moment”  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-elizabeth-coleridge

Photo See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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To pray where prayer has been valid 

More than an order of words

If you came this way,  
Taking any route, starting from anywhere, 
At any time or at any season,  
It would always be the same: you would have to put off  
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, 
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity  
Or carry report. You are here to kneel  
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more  
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation 
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.  
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,  
They can tell you, being dead: the communication 
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.  
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment 
Is England and nowhere. Never and always. 

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding 

Image attribution istolethetv, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

a person paying their respects at hong kong cemetary during qing ming festival, happy valley, hong kong.

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This Quiet Space – a poem by Elizabeth Mills

This quiet space

enriches

a deeper touching

a place of calm

and quietude

a place of healing

and recovery

a place of love

and enabling

There are no words

yet a sense

of meaning

and purpose

Reconnecting with

what is

and what forever

will be

This day and every day

Amen

                                                                      Elizabeth Mills

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Poem for Christmas by Ruth Mwenya

Does Christ drop into you,

like water?

Sink into the deepest places,

seep into the narrowest ways;

right down into your feet

to ground you?

As Love descends,

does She hollow out your soul?

Stretch it at the edges.

Expanding your capacity for herself;

opening up the space inside you?

In the stillness,

Can you reach down?

Can you feel the warmth

on the tips of your fingers

as you touch the mystery

within?

Is it too deep?

Out of reach,

Just beyond your grasp.

Don’t give in to fear, dear one.

Be still.

Wait: the Christ is born again.

Love is rising.

Ruth Mwenya

wordsandmusingsruthm.blogspot.com