jeanne d’arc

crescendo

i have wondered at the pattern of the leaves
the voices of the rain, so lonely
what have you seen, angel eye? what have you tasted?
we can meet in the skies
before the trees can greet the precipitation
when we are before the God of impossible destinies
to breathe unknown sensations
the mountain rising into the third heaven
the air of haloes slipping the light from their brims
in a dream i flew into your castle
the scent of crushed wildflowers was everywhere
and time was a strange rhythm
like we were meant to dance forever
we forgot all the magic we used to get to this place
because you know, love is the greater art
and i don’t know if you remember
how they tried to end you
smoke upon which your eagle feather rose
opening the book of the neverending tale
and a greater fire lit all the world
that rendered the Maid cast into a thousand statues
that could not speak your name without honor
here, where the clouds splinter
where the atmosphere can only dream higher
hearken, all you creatures!
we have known an immortal heart
we have seen the beginning of a new heaven
the dream to devour the whole of earth
never now to wonder how new a halo is struck

Molenkamp: Untitled

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It seems Christianity is divided into pieces. There are those who are Christians in name only, who have joined as to be part of the mob so they will not be trampled by it, who use the cross like a gang sign. Then there are those who find they cannot in their heart follow what that mob follows, and have given up trying to find the Christ they may have once believed in: Christians all but in name. Then there are the most fortunate, who have the Christ of love in their hearts and minds, who are not ashamed to be a part of a faith of love, peace, mercy, and kindness. If you are of the third, rejoice: for you are found, and no longer lost.

In the dreaming, time stands still, and then flashes ahead, an approximation of eternity.

In the dreaming, I have noticed that I have died, several times, but never looked down.

In the dreaming, light is as pure as the first instant of creation, unmixed with solid things.

In the dreaming, I fell and fell, and I could not wake, and the feeling became as like a womb.

In the dreaming, there is no wind I have ever felt, as if all the air was less than imaginary.

In the dreaming, I leaped high and walked on air, and vowing to use my power for good.

In the dreaming, the shadow of death is like so much paper, easily torn, blown away at whim.

the unnameable thing that the mystery of love hints at:
this is love itself, too simple to be put in words
at the beginning of beginnings, before time knew us
and here, where i am drowning in the meanings
where the numbers portend some vague reality
here is love unknowable except one completely lets go
into the void to release all angled preconceptions
for i have looked into too many mirrors passing by
that i have lost all imagination of what i could be
and love, it waits for me to find the misty trail
where time means less than a whisper that surely knows

We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be—the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning. You may ask what good it will be to us if we do not understand it. But that is easily answered. A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

the age that emerges must declare: first, do no harm
what happens when the world systemically starts going your way?
in the transition, it is an alchemy that turns an age over
we will forget more than we learned, and return to innocence
the spirit to be victorious inside us, it becomes complete
and time hints at the secret: we cannot help but always change
zero in on what cannot help but alter every spoken world
dreaming of the actions that have no consequence, into the void
we have it: iron changes into gold when mixed with blood

Yes, time and chance happen to us all. Destiny often rides on a small miscue that directs a person one foot from where he would have stood before. And one may find destiny may rely more on what we lose than what we gain. All the while you pine for some small token of childhood (irreplaceable, of course), the way you compensate for the loss moves the gears significantly on their course. One wonders about control, for the things we do not notice add up to more than a butterfly effect upon our futures. But perhaps what Gandhi told us makes sense here: what we do is insignificant, but it is very important that we do it. For all we may be able to achieve is to hold on, sometimes for dear life. Or let go, and see where the wind really goes.

Antonio Puri: Revisiting Sarnath 1

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We measure things in millions, now, and give no second glance to the number. But we do not comprehend what it really might be. One can say he can spend a million dollars, but he does not dole it out one dollar at a time; it is in sizable chunks, and perhaps, after it is all gone, he never actually experienced all that such a number could mean. We are overloaded by these numbers; billions are even worse. A million, one might, through patience, absorb — a billion, though, no human being ever truly held this number in his head. Ever. He may have held the ten digits that represent it, but that number is beyond this mortal brain to process. And these numbers are said so many times, that one has no opportunity to truly wrap one’s cognitive facilities around them. One should respect such numbers. They are more than the stars you can see in the sky with the naked eye, even out in the deepest country field — when the whole of night is ablaze with the punctuation of God.

If what they do does not make you destitute, or in some way derail your life: if all they can do is take your money, then they cannot take a thing away from you that you do not give them: for all of what you truly possess, what is truly yours — your soul, your humanity — this is yours, and only yours, to keep or waste, by what you decide to be and do when you are wronged. This is the love of God, that He made it so that the material things are only as valuable as how much you have decided your treasure is to be these things; where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also, the good book says. When you decide that you will not be one iota less kind to someone else because of something evil done unto you, this is treasure indeed. Gold cannot buy such graces, and sometimes, we lose a little material to gain meaning we might never have received had we not so lost.

weaves of breezes shape the sense of time flowing as invisible fabrics across my skin
we, as harbingers of a better day: inhale the darkness and calculations, exhaling light
with every kick of the psyche, to break any glass ceiling of dreaming, of imagination
shifting through the planes of existence as if the angels gave you momentary wings
hero after hero have conquered the skies, only to long for a home to touch down to
thus the challenge: to love in all might without one need that tomorrow should come
i return to myself, having been scattered by many dreams, by the dream of the world
the wind of the waking world i find quickly familiar, to wonder, where have i been?
i have dreamed i did heroic things, fought the beast at the dark side of strange skies
and when God found me, i did not wrestle; but removed my shoes, for it is holy ground
the breezes now to escape my touch, and time to continue as time is bent on changing
and all i could think of this sinner: my Lord, my Lord, why did you not abandon me?

I am a dream of the dust, and to dust I shall return, upon its waking. For a few moments the universe gets to peer at itself through these eyes of mine, for some scant instances the universe gets to wonder about what it might be. It is an amazing thing, ephemeral. Even if it happens the billions of times that it does, one must not lose sight of its miracle. For never again will this thing I call “I” ever appear on this blue dot in the cosmos. Life is an experiment in uniqueness: grouped together as similar are the millions, but each one is exquisitely its own. God has blessed us all to the point where we no longer notice the wonder of it all. I think it part of the plan. And those who consider why may glimpse the nature of love.

Max Ernst: Birth of a Galaxy

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From the crude cry which we have so often heard during the war years: “If there is a God, why doesn’t He stop Hitler?,” to the unspoken questioning in many a Christian heart when a devoted servant of Christ dies from accident or disease at what seems to us a most inopportune moment, there is this universal longing for God to intervene, to show His hand, to vindicate His purpose. I do not pretend to understand the ways of God any more than the next man; but it is surely more fitting as well as more sensible for us to study what God does do and what He does not do as He works in and through the complex fabric of this disintegrated world, than to postulate what we think God ought to do and then feel demoralized and bitterly disappointed because He fails to fulfill what we expect of Him.

embers of a dream, and firelight
the years slouch on, the world becomes shorter as we age
from the ground lifted, forgetting our yesterday’s weight
(did we even exist in that ambiguous time?)
faith in my inmost inmost fires
home to a thousand unnamed words, a vocabulary of silence
compelled by the illusion of time to accelerate my wondering
(imagine time, wrapped around itself: a rose)
we live our lives shrouded in sound
darkness slips from our grasping; we hold nothing at all
the transience of the dream, glances off our perceptions
(returned from nowhere, the moment is blank)

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

– Bob Dylan

to follow the trail by the faintest scratches in the dirt
shall we believe in infinite silence, in the before and the after?
swimming in our senses when the swirl of whispers becomes too much
i see life shifted red, in the distance we feed in our busyness
hidden in the light like an unknown angel shall we drive the point
into the storm shall we follow in the footsteps of immortals
emerging from the fray to a field of vast quiet, in twilight
i trust the hands of strangers with all my precious dreams…
fear not! light has never been an illusion, nor does darkness exist
and death cannot calculate deeply enough to zero our voice