Sunday, November 30, 2008

Journey, Cleansing

The fact is, I am blind. Not that I don't have eyes, but I know the world can be seen in another way, more true than I can see. I know because I once saw that way. Now all I have is memory of memory. I call seeing that way "seeing through God's Eyes". There is such a complication surrounding all that. I have never been able to do justice to the whole story. Still, the fact is, I am blind, but I have a memory of a memory of seeing.

Journey

Tapping cane, I'm blind,
Insistent, I'm going home.
I still know the way.

The voices tell me, "Stay!Stay!"
Chatter in many dim shades.

I tell them, "Shut up!"
Such a stir I cause - fades.
Now I hear the road.

If you are blind, other senses can get more acute. I walk around my house in the dark for practice. I want to sit loosely in my senses, be able to slide around in them, have hearing matter more, or the tactile senses. Actually hearing does matter more, and the written word entering through sight is a weak sister to the spoken word heard with open ears.

The ancient Aryans who settled in India knew that the beginning of the universe was a Sacred Sound. Hmmmm. The Big Bang. Of course that is considered to have been an explosion of and then coalescence of light, yet the suggestion here is that the sound that event made is what is sacred.

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Baptism is not only Christian. The idea of washing, purification is universal. Carl Jung built a psychology of depth and placed certain visions in the deeps as connecting features across individuals and cultures, past and present. He called them archetypes. Baptism is one of them. This complex reveals the persistent understanding that ordinary existence is marred by detritus which must and can be removed in order to enter the holy, that there is a barrier between us and God that can be washed away. Say it another way. There is distance between God and me that can be washed away. Baptism is the start of a journey toward intimacy. Immersion. Womb. Gestation. Birth.

Cleansing

May I take one reed?
Here is my heart's last promise.
Hold it in token.

I am due this next cleansing.
I shall lay beneath the wave.

When I become breath
I shall use the reed's passage.
Like mist I shall rise.

1 comment:

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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