When we allowed

science to convince us

that there is no soul

or intelligence in matter,

the Earth’s physical forms

became only cemetery markers

showing where spirits once moved

through the world.

The autopsy

of the material world

then began in earnest.

Its dissected parts

now litter the landscape

and we walk, depressed,

among lifeless statuary,

only accidental lifeforms

on the surface of

a ball of rock

hurtling around the sun.

The metal gate is unlocked.

Other kinds of flowers

nod in sunlight

outside that wrought-iron fence.

….Stephen Harrod Buhner

healing comes from color and texture and aliveness and the gaze of the heart inward…..when we send our dreams out from this place, the magic lifts burdens insurmountable to the heavy and dark will…..this is the elegant depth of nature….

The life cycle is, as its name implies, a cycle. At fifteen years of age, life stretches straight ahead of us, a highway to riches and fame. But as we mature, so does our understanding. Sooner or later, it dawns upon us that our trajectory is anything but a straight line. We zig and zag, double back upon ourselves, tie ourselves in knots, branch out in new directions. And as we approach death, we may discover that life’s two ends meet. The life cycle ends where it begins. Moreover, each stage along the way ‘recycles’ its material into the next; an adult doesn’t emerge full-born, like Athena out of the head of Zeus, but unfolds naturally from the lengthening limbs and thickening muscles of adolescence. Our life is a coming-into-being, a gradual disclosure of our true self. What is the aim of this coming-into-being? Thomas Carlyle expressed it well: ‘Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may.’ And here we encounter the great paradox of human development: that in order for each of us to ‘become all that he was created capable of being,’ it is necessary to reverse the life cycle, go against the grain, run the film backward, and become a child again, even die and be born again……P. Zeleski & P. Kaufman

symmetry & divergence

O human, see then the human being rightly: the human being has heaven and earth and the whole of creation in itself, and yet is a complete form, and in it everything is already present, though hidden….Hildegard of Bingen