one didn't matter

I wanted once

to be a mystic

it was clear

I was no-

body

So I didn't 

bother to file

a patent claiming

one didn't matter

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where it isn't

On this day, the acknowledgement of Mary’s being invited.

These two poets give us perspective:

1.

Annunciation

         (by Marie Howe)

Even if I don't see it again -- nor ever feel it

I know it is -- and that if once it hailed me

it ever does--

and so it is myself I want to turn in that direction

not as toward a place, but it was a tilting

within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where

it isn't -- I was blinded like that -- and swam

in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so

specifically myself I thought I'd die

from being loved like that.

2.

ANNUNCIATION

                   (by Denise Levertov)

   

           ‘Hail space for the unconfined God’

             (—from the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc)

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, 

almost always a lectern, a book; always

the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,

the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,

whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions

courage.

       The engendering Spirit

did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice

integral to humanness.

               ______________

Aren’t there annunciations

of one sort or another

in most lives?

         Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies,

enact them in sullen pride,

uncomprehending.

More often

those moments

      when roads of light and storm

      open from darkness in a man or woman,

are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

                                 God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child–but unlike others,

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence

fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel’s reply,

the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness,

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being,

the sum of power–

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man-child

needing, like any other,

milk and love–

but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

his gaze

The question was put to the old man, "Have you ever seen God?"

He said nothing , looking down at the ground.

She asked again.

And again he said nothing, only this time he raised his gaze, and looked at her.

if laid into the earth

The king and the land are one.

When we look back to these ancient schools of initiation, what sort of a teaching do we find there? What was the Mystery that was taught in them? It is after all only the forms of the teaching that change with the passage of time. Astonishing as it may seem, we actually find that in these very ancient schools of initiation the secret, the mystery that Parsifal discovered, is brought to its highest development — the secret; namely, of how the new budding life of nature in Springtime is connected with the Mystery of the Cross. We have to understand it in the following way. 

The power of reproduction which we recognize in the animal and human kingdoms is also to be seen in the plant kingdom. In the springtime of the year the divine active power of creation shoots up out of Mother Earth. For we have to recognize that a deep connection exists between the power that manifests when the Earth clothes herself with her robe of green, and the divine creative power. The pupils in the initiation school were taught as follows: “All around you in nature you see the opening flower buds, and within them a power at work which is then later concentrated in the small grains of seed. Countless seeds will come forth from the flowers — seeds which, if laid into the earth, will be capable of bringing forth new plants. And now receive what I am about to say into your heart; take it deeply into your soul. The process that is taking place out there in nature is the very same as takes place in human beings and in the animal kingdom, only in nature it takes place without desire or passion. It goes forward in perfect purity and chastity. The boundless and chaste innocence that sleeps in the flower buds of the plants — this, it was felt, must enter right into the soul of the pupils. 

(--from, Parsifal, The Secret of the Grail in the Works of Richard Wagner, Parsifal, Arthur, Lecture by Rudolf Steiner,  Landin, July 29th, 1906 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19060729p01.html 

If the king is corrupt, the land suffers. 

light prayer

432,288 miles diameter

92.96 million miles away --



Morning sun rises through





Bamboo shade -- right here --




Everything is new and near

rooting for tree

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary questions Judge Gorsuch at his confirmation hearing.

Yesterday the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency testified before the House Intelligence Committee covering Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

There are questions about the truthfulness of the current President when he accused the prior president of wiretapping the residence of the current president, a felony if proved true. There seems, on the testimony of members on the Intelligence Community, to be no evidence pointing to the accuracy of the allegation.

The machinery of government grinds on.

There are 3 branches.

Let’s root for the tree to be healthy.

when everything changed

Russian cyber attack with collusion?

So much to lose if true.

They say it is spring today.

How late are we?

nothing moves

under white ash bed

blanket red embers yawn, flame

licks twigs -- slow waking