The sun coming up red adds to the flame of fall
colours orange red and yellow like fire
a warning in the morning
We are armed and
running late to a strategy meeting
Up north they are burying sea cans and water tanks
Like one of the horror movies John showed us
Take Shelter (2011)
Plagued by apocalyptic visions
a young husband and father questions
whether to shelter his family from a coming storm
or to shelter his family from himself
We never questioned Johns apocalyptic nuancing
although the Israelis did
while his storms kept us sheltering
and another project kept us busy
No room nor energy lying around for doubting him
Dont doubt he told us sternly
If you dont know now, return
to when you did know.
Huh?
Anyone still interested in making sense of his psychology?
Watch the movies we sat through at his request
As if he could inure our nervous systems
to the benumbed degree of a psychopaths
His neighbours must be scratching their heads up in the Fort
Thinking the worst will come from one place where you are all dug in
Lo and behold it comes from somewhere else altogether
Where you are not prepared
Thats how the movie went
A real storm is already trouncing us and we are trapped
In shelters or in death bound arms
waiting
for the remote war to finish us
for the narrative war to bind us
for the weapon merchants to amass their daily bread
These are the descendants of dinosaurs and oil
Over here the children of god
There are the ones in the fear they call the love of death
Three species mixing it up
all downstream of an ancient mechanism
Swept away
As long as we stay in our allotted sandboxes we will not be okay
As long as we play with their monopoly money we will not be okay
As long as we never puzzle the money piece
next to the military piece
next to the media piece
We will never have to see
In the aftermath of the horror of horrors
Im safe in my house in my body
remembering qiqong from decades ago
Im safe in the eucalyptus grove
moving qi in memories of Israels bright hot sun
The ruins
the wall
and Batshevas garden
The midnight sounds of thunder
like bombs in the rain
There is an arc of geometric lights sparking at the periphery of vision
And Im safe in a zendo listening to a teacher teaching
Its all Maya
Its all illusion
A friend is questioning my sensibilities about phantoms by the lake
And I assure her its my own reflections I see of buried ancestors
And what beast names the beyond as intimacy she asks
I say the intimacy between Hamas and Israel
In Johns folly
there were countless boundaries to cross
before anyone arrived at intimacy
He called them lines
lines in yourself
Beliefs in yourself that deprive you of greater glories
It was a tool for coercion like the psyops of our leaders
luring us out past the wise borders of our hearts
Entering Gaza where there is only punishment
Entering a spell wrapped in secrets and hidden agendas
There is no leader speaking
of what these border crossings do on the inside
How they writhe and grip they tank and coil they burn
they cry out for the mercy of another
Johns intimacies are too coarse and demeaning to detail here
His nervous system functions like another species
No amount of terrorizing movies ever numbed my reactions
to rape, malevolence, violence and aggression
No bright light of guru love can blind me to a horror of horrors
Maya tells me its all a narrative
A psychological mindset
predisposing me to feeling powerless
I am a pawn
We are all slaves
Its not a pretty picture
Would it be different if we simply looked away
Like we did for decades with John
What we denied never disappeared
Truth be told, it got much worse
Its hard to look out over the top of my viewfinder
Im looking through a glass darkly at a world on fire
A world of dinosaurs moving their corpses through barrels of money
through pipes in the sea and bodies dying on land
My vision cracks and crystallizes in an arc around my vision
Perhaps something detaching but I remember
Last I saw this sparkling shimmering sight
The zen master said it was Maya
Its all Maya
Whats obscuring my vision
when I long for redemption
To see clearly and know
May there be for me
A narrow road to a contemplative life
Limitations on my seeing bygone
If our brothers in arms in western Asia
deprived of their lines as nations
were to also recant the lineages they cling to
soon they must see they are who they believe they are not
Their rain of blood tested to prove
their brotherhood
their sisterhood
Choosing to remain impounded by lineage
our intimacy is with enemies
and keeps the controllers moving us as they like
Thus my narrative speaks.
A solar eclipse!
The potential of an unusual perspective
Let go of this toxic relationship!
Surrender these old issues!
Who needs this mindset from the past?!
Its preventing movement forward
Gather in and surrender old images of this world
Treasure a focus on transformation
Attachment obstructs a longed for experience
Awareness observing and then acting accordingly
Let the internal impact move me now
Let it take me to the images I love
Birds on the table eating my breakfast in the wind
Friends on the grass reunited and smiling upwards
The old vendor in Arab souk offering me tea and a wink
Uncommon new music in Yaels upstairs apartment
The women in burkas sharing their smokes
so close together on stools in a little turn of the city
The white rooftops of Jaffa all the way to the sea
Marys Spring in Ein Kerem so humble
A baobab tree and the cats
Let the internal move
more than the external
Now is the time!
Letting go of the impact I meant to make in the world and dreaming
unlimited by any intentions
of a new path the departs from what has been worn to death
What does the future behold
What dream comes true
of all the ancestors
What images to be treasured and then be honed
I dont see clearly now but perhaps at the end of time
For now we see through a glass darkly but then face to face
Now I know in part but then shall I know even as also I am known
Now abideth in faith
hope
charity
these three
but the greatest of these is charity
Unknown by some species
It’s a well know historic that Roman emperor Constantine initiated Christianity into the empire by praying to the Christian God for victory prior to the battle of Mulvian Bridge in 312. He was reported to have seen a sign of Christianity metaphysically that indicated he was to secure victory and he did, subsequently ending persecution and beginning the processing that established Christianity as the official Roman religion. What is not well know and unsubstantiated is how it came to pass that Constantine would be prompted to pray to a persecuted peoples God.
It seems one Sunday in 312 a few months prior to the famous bridge battle he was attending the circus as was his delight and on that particular Sunday there was a new catch of very pius Christians recently captured while in feverent prayed in a sacred forest glen. The captain had mention that this particular batch stunk of piety and might be a great show of prayfull fear while being slaughtered. The lions were given an extra 10 days of starvation so to move more excitingly. When the appointed time came the Christians and lions were released simultaineously. The hungry lions made quick work of the Christians. All were amazed at how the Christians died, standing fearless with hardly a whimper. One un named teenage boy had time to to walk over to Constantine’s box, look into his eyes and utter intimately; ‘hallowed be his name’.
It was this pronouncement and how the Christians died that inspired Constantine to pray to their God.
Imagine; to be ‘destroyed’ by a lion and be so integratingly grounded in certain knowing that in full love you can say without pointing; hallowed be his name.