I Thought I Could Follow

In my innocence and naivete

I thought I could follow

your flashing footsteps

over oceans and past moons.

I had many loves before

and a heart strong with trials

so when your face appeared

I was sure I could follow.

But you turned out to be a god

and your standard of faith so high.

Watching from the shore of eternity

I knew I could not follow.

Still, I am alive in your sea;

your love swims in my heart.

What can I do but want you.

What can I do but follow.

…..John Wolf

love is dry concept without the raw, organic ideals that give us hope, inspiration, and humility…….when we center within the profound and transcending limitations of our spiritual aspirations, we lean into a sacred trust…..this is love…..

We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves, a spirituality that is as deep as the Earth process itself, a spirituality that is born out of the solar system. For it is in the stars that the primordial elements take shape in both their physical and psychic aspects. Out of these elements the solar system and Earth took shape, and out of Earth, ourselves. There is a triviality in any spiritual discipline that does not experience itself as supported by the spiritual as well as the physical dynamics of the entire cosmic-Earth process. Ultimately, spirituality is a mode of being in which not only the divine and human commune with each other but through which we discover ourselves in the universe and the universe discovers itself in us….Thomas Berry

the wallowing well is dry

But how are we to love when we are stiff and numb and disinterested? How are we to transform ourselves into limber and soft organisms lying open to the world at the quick? By what process and what agency do we perform the Great Work, transforming lowly materials into gold? Love, like its counterpart Death, is a yielding at the center. Not in the sentiment. Nor in the genitals. Look deep into my eyes and see the love-light. Figured forth in intelligent cooperation, sensitive congeniality, physical warmth. At the center the love must live. One gives up all one has for this. This is the love that resides in the self, the self-love, out of which all love pours. The fountain, the source. At the center. One gives up all the treasured sorrow and self-mistrust, all the precious loathing and suspicion, all the secret triumphs of withdrawal. One bends in the wind. There are many disciplines that strengthen one’s athleticism for love. Look at this flower. Look at this child. Look at this rock with lichen growing on it. Listen to this gull scream as he drops through the air to gobble the bread I throw and clumsily rights himself in the wind. Bear ye one another’s burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law……..M.C. Richards