Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower...

 

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. 

As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

~Ranier Maria Rilke

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The Little Light in Bell Towers

St. Paul's Church

I pass this church, now a meditation center, many times a day.

It's the open tower that catches my heart. 

and all the towers like this that I see as I’m walking and driving.

Open(bell) towers feels like a metaphor of the soul, 

still sheltered in the body but also open to the air and sky 

- the spirit. The small light inside me, that has been here 

before it was captured in this body. 

This little light 

that searches for Light that wants to emerge 

from the dark interior of the creature to the top, 

to be connected with the Light.

It reminds me to be present and to go a little deeper. 

It reminds me that there is a light within me, 

that is sustained by every effort that is 

made to give it air – a little breath of space from 

my i's and noise so that it can join my life.

~J

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I Can Never...

 

Ferdinand Keller

"I can never come to quietude 

if I do not sacrifice my agitation 

and my tensions. 

I cannot have a free attention 

if I do not sacrifice what keeps it enslaved. 

Everything I wish has to be paid for. 

If I wish to have a new state, 

I must sacrifice the old. 

We never get more than we give up. 

What we receive is proportional to what we sacrifice."

~Jeanne DeSaltzmann

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