Of Palms and Palimpsests

 

To dream is not an evasion,
nor a waste of time or energy,
even if dreams fly
beyond the arc
of human consciousness.

To dream is to be in continual free-fall
to the unexpected, unanticipated next;
dreaming requires no notion or plan
—all is suspense, all is in suspension,
a readiness in unreadiness
or the scratching of a quill
over the sheet of foolscap—
archaic,
but only in the sense
that one might lack the ink
or the penmanship
in the non-present now.

There, we might glance
at our lively page
to find nothing written there, at all;
but the paper has been folded and eared,
screwed up and tossed,
retrieved and smoothed,
folded neatly, then unfolded,
creased in differing directions,
only to be undone back to flat,
worn, now and limp,
lacking enough integrity, perhaps,
for aerodynamic flight.

And all for a lack of direction,
a longing for flight
fighting reticence to height,
so that the dipped reed might record
a thought or trace a silhouette
—or otherwise leave a mark,
even if a splotchy blot

—Ultimately, the run-on sentence
is the avoidance of endings,
especially for those who
can’t figure out how to make a start,
or maybe it is all continuous starting,
without end,
Amen.

While wrapped in these ponderings,
in this landscape of dreaming,
there approached a form
drawing slowly up from a distance,
and soon there appeared a man,
riding an onager.

His gaze was steady and warm,
laugh-lines were in evidence,
and he greeted me like a friend.

Seeing the creased and blank sheet,
he said,

We embody the world we see,

an unfathomable array of beauty
punctuated by experiential pain.

Life is good, so we are taught,
and we can find ourselves

in this goodness as existential truth

even when the willow bends to breaking.

Don’t leave the canvas blank, my friend,
make your mark.

Don’t be afraid to create yourself,
be in the being;
as you have folded
and unfolded,
so all your markings
continue to amend and change.

Simultaneously, we each
know and do not know
where we are and why;
doing is all,
we invent as we go.

The words we utter,
and later record,
live on, even down to the dust
that is carried on the wind;
don’t die with your song trapped inside
—sing out, in full voice.

I’m making my mark, see?
he said,
touching his forehead, his lips, his heart,
don’t hesitate to make yours,
even if you don’t understand the significance
—the run-on sentence is the doing,
not the avoidance;
you can write and overwrite,
paint over and write some more—
it’s all continuous starting,
continuous writing,
without end,
Amen. 

He reached out and took my hand,
and held it for a moment, smiling,
before letting go,
but, as an after-thought,
reached out and touched my forehead.

Then, handing me a palm frond,
while good naturedly
slapping the onager’s flank,
forward and off on their page they went.

Looking down,
I saw that my page was full,
and that words were even running,
puddling in the creases,
accumulating in pools,
to run off the page
across the wadi,
or fly off the page,
up into the sky.

Both knowing and not knowing,
continuously starting,
we run, we fly, and we sing
without end,

Amen

© 2023 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen & songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

To the Shores of Sure

 

Within the isolation of their remote land,
from inside the work of their silent meditations,
each sage had apprehended a light the night sky,
a light indeed so singular and so great that 

the light of ordinary day seemed dim.

This light appeared
in the person of a star,
speaking and singing,
brightening and ringing,
inviting the seers on a journey
to a distant land
to see the birth
of a baby of light.

So, out of the land of Un-Sure,
the seers went forth,
guided, fed and nurtured
by this amazing star.

Having finally arrived, they found
a humble stable,
a humble couple,
and humble witnesses
to a humble birth
of new light.

The seers bestowed
what gifts they had to give
to mark the occasion,
to bless the child,
this newborn star,
burning brightly
at his mother’s breast.

This bright star
—the embodied ancient of days:
maker-father;
wisdom-mother;
innovator-child—
then proclaimed:

All that has been,
All that is now,
All that will be
has waited for this new light,
which a light that lights 

beyond the brightness and clarity
of even the visible light.

Know that this light is always present:
within every person
there is a cave of mysteries,
the fresh and fragrant wellspring
of this inimitable light.

You are the light of the world!
How so ever you see the star
shows you in a role
as light embodied,
and in a form appropriate
to this and every moment,

Your inner light is not about
worship self-served in apathy,
but about discernment to
action in service to others.

Every person with a love of learning,
take heed of this truth:
the divided house cannot stand;
what can divide light?
Only darkness.

Yet glorious light pools everywhere;
there is no place untouched by this light,
very light of very light,
begotten, not made,
meant to bring an end to all mysteries
with the simple truth that
we are, all and each,
light for each other,
to lighten the world.

Therefore, the time of waiting is past;
it is time to rise from your dreams.

 

Awaken and go forth
to fulfill your light in the world,
that you may overflow
with benevolence and peace,
blessing all along your way
for all your days.

Thus, having blessed the light
and having been blessed by the light,
having heard the homily of light,
the seers returned home,
—ever after known as the Shores of Sure—
to live out their calling in service.

© 2023 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen & songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

NOTES and COMMENTARY: This bit of writing (perhaps a work in progress) is my odd sort of commentary on a pseudepigraphical writing known as the Revelation of the Magi, extant in the form of an 8^th century manuscript in Syriac, preserved in the Vatican Library (Biblioteca apostolica, syr. 162) that may have a 5^th century antecedent in another language. This is an interesting hash of a tale that contains, among other things, the suggestion that the magi are twelve descendants of Seth in a distant land of Shir, who received stories or texts from Adam about “the fall;” a visitation from a polymorphous star being; a journey to see the birth of the baby; anointing of the sages and their return to the land of Shir from which they came; the arrival of Judas Thomas to the land of Shir to preach in summation to the sages.

A few lines stood out to me, when I read the translation of the text in Brent Landau’s dissertation on the work. “And you will see the completion of all the mysteries in Jerusalem, and everything that was spoken with you will become true for you,” is spoken by the star prior to the journey. “Therefore, rise and go in peace to your light-receiving land, because you have been deemed worthy to receive the perfect light of the heavenly majesty, and to come worship it with your gifts in joy. Behold, you have completed everything that you were commanded by your fathers, and you have also been deemed worthy to know and learn the ancient hidden mysteries, which were written for you from the first generations. Now, behold, you have seen the completion of your mysteries…” The star child sums things up, “And it was not in vain that you were created in the world, and heaven and earth and all the worlds came into being for your sake.”  

Meta-message to me: Clarifying light makes an end to all mysteries.

//

Religion, like politics and philosophy, is about governance. 

Ideally, the best kind of governance is self-governance.

Practically speaking, the only kind of governance is self-governance. 

Sages, seers and prophets suggest a self-governance that is inspired by awe in and duty toward a universal, parent-like deity. The christian writings that purport to record the teachings of Jesus have been eclipsed by redactions, sectarian battles over interpretation, apologias that strive to turn the hero into a god from before all time, and provide colliding sacred and secular visions of the best way to control the masses in conservative hierarchical fashion, so that an elite small group wields (hopefully benign) power and metes out a meager sort of justice (when it suits).

Millennia of competing religions behaving badly, in sectarian Technicolor, has had the effect of tossing out the holy child with the dirty bath-water of political corruption, most often reflected as authoritarianism that goes against all practical realities of self-governance. 

In the canonical gospels and within other texts that record what Jesus was apparently saying and teaching, the message is unequivocal that if you believe in the god of Mosaic law then you must self-govern in a way that serves others simultaneously with self. This is what is meant by righteousness and equity. This is what communion is all about. Jesus was talking about oppressed people turning the tables and rethinking their lot by understanding themselves as having a critical, on-the-ground and irreplaceable role in community. Religion stomps this message right out, countering with a top-down authoritarian model that states people can’t possibly be good, god should strike you down because of that, but Jesus took it for Team Sin, so that you don’t have to self-govern or be accountable. But then, because of that, you can’t have a say or a role beyond following a series of hollow leaders, doing what you are told, paying up your money and taking your chances.

If there is truth in all of this god-talk, it lies in the message that we are each a unique occurrence of light in the world; this means we have something to live up to and live for, through ethical self-governance that serves community and eschews the kind of personal power that is destructive and greedy. Self governance does not mean self-serving; it means an economy of duty to others, as well as self. Duty is best accomplished out of necessity, and more so by choice. We have not one, but many roles to fulfill for ourselves and for others; this is the significance of the polymorphic star-child. Living in a state of holiness and grace is living in the faith that your best efforts will be met by those of others, and that this is aided and blessed by the workings of the Divine Unseen. 

This is the Epiphany I have received from a lifetime of readings in and meditations on religion, philosophy and history, and I share it heartily with you. 

May you receive many blessings on your journey, and share your light with the world.

//

Revelations of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem, © 2010 by Brent Christopher Landau, Harper Collins NY

Image: Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423, tempera on panel, 283 x 300 cm (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

For, a Thanksgiving meditation

 

For 

the birds that nest in the trees and in the reeds,

the flowering plants and fish that sustain them,

the great, diverse system of living beings;

the depth of roots in the seeded earth,

providing shade and shelter, food and fuel;

light, shadow and darkness,

an unending cycle of renewal from everything,
from waking to rest;

land, with all its contours and environments,

that supports each footfall, each seed, every root and liquid source;

water, from which all life emerges and returns as a blessing;

people, of every uniqueness, who discover in themselves roles to fill,

who grow & nurture, think & create, who care & give & build,

contributing to the rich song, music and dance of existence;

deeply thought ideas,
drafted over such seas of experience as joy, love, pain or hardship,

intended to pave a better way, or at least make the attempt;

circles we move in,

of family, friends and colleagues, 

shaping and sharing community through arts and cultures,

people who challenge and improve by being healthy exemplars;

those no longer with us, who lived, loved, served, nurtured 

even especially people we don’t know,

the empty chairs that trigger unforced tears & a heartache of memories;

all who stand for something, stand up for someone,

all for one, few, or many — and one for all;

being for is a sort of goodness; 

it might be the only goodness there is

in this world where some people profit 

by inviting anger, strife and antagonism to the table,

where the constant tug is either passively or aggressively against;

I pray for all in need, for all who love, for all who sorrow,

and for all who stake their lives on being
for something, anything, someone, goodness;

for all that is for

—for all that and more, 

I give thanks.

© Elisabeth T. Eliassen & songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com 

Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 3): One to Rule Them All

 

Vast swaths of the general public (here, there and everywhere) take great stock in the notion of inevitability. 

This is a very interesting fault in human perspective. The “inevitable” whatever can manifest as concretely positive, negative or neutral, or take a positive, negative or neutral tone. The reason I suggest that this is a human fault is because most people will relate the word inevitable to the word fate, and take both words together as an indication that no action is needed, so why bother to take any?

This is a type of magical thinking. Here are examples of abstract notions people take to be inevitable (aside from the punch lines of an old joke from Daniel Defoe’s 1726 play The Political History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern, famously quoted by Benjamin Franklin: death and taxes): progress, world unity, the end of the world, equality, change makes us better, a simple solution to every question, and God’s will.  I’m sure you can think of a few abstract concepts that are linked to the notion of inevitability. Some of these could be categorized as “pipedreams,” others as apocalyptic fears.

When we think or believe that things or situations are inevitable, do we push back on the notion by trying some alternative or do we give up?

We are asked questions and the manner in which we are taught often implies that there are answers to every question and that we should know what those answers are or how to calculate them. We therefore dutifully attempt to find solutions to every question directed toward us. For example, here is an actual word problem that has been given to children in school:

There are 125 sheep and 5 dogs in a flock. 

How old is the shepherd?

Do you know what the answer is? When children are posed this questions, their first thought is likely: I’ve been given this as a math problem, there must be an answer, therefore, I’d better do something to come up with a solution. 

In reality, sometimes, it might be better to question the question. How old is the shepherd? is intended to be an exercise in logic; it is hoped that students will be able to discern that this question is illogically constructed and unanswerable. Hilarious results ensue, to be sure, when students try to compute answers to such a question. But, let’s be honest, this is a dirty trick to play on kids.

It’s a dirty trick to play on adults as well, who, sadly, also fall prey to the illogical question. The search for a fundamental theory of everything, in my humble opinion, is an adult variety entertaining the illogical question, a high-brow version of magical thinking. There is a lot of grant money being given to further abstract theories of everything, but I find questions along these lines a diversion from the kind of innovation we need—innovation that offers practical solutions to diverse daily problems. For example, it may be more practical to explore non-polluting ways of turning wastewater into biogas that can be safely used as fuel. We, as a species, certainly produce plenty of it! Why not recycle it!

The search for “one and done” solutions is another example of magical thinking. A gullible pubic is socially engineered down a pay-to-play rabbit hole that is papered with bright and misleading advertisements. However, as explored in a previous essay in this series, the world of intense diversity flies in the face of “one size fits all” thinking. We really do know better; one size cannot possibly fit all. Every place presents its own set of circumstances that need to be taken into account, and every individual in a place is liable to present a different set of skills and perspectives that may bear on those challenges. Baking bread is completely different at sea level than it is at high altitude.

Politically, we have in real-time reached that tipping point where utopian literature turns to its darker, fully dystopian side. Every single utopia ever conceived empowers a small elite counsel of elders to dictate what is best for the masses. Plato explored this in The Republic and The Laws, followed by a long line of writers, from Thomas More and Francis Bacon, to Margaret Cavendish and Jonathan Swift, on down to Edward Bellamy and William Morris, thence to appear ever darker in scope with Yevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, even unto Margaret Attwood. In the most positive examples of this form of literature, the minority band running the program is intelligent and benevolent; on the flip-side, the leadership is always less than well educated, punitive and totalitarian.

In the United States, circumstances beyond the control of the majority plebiscite has put the fate of our foundational liberalism, which for so long seemed to embody “inevitable progress,” into the hands of a conservative majority of the Supreme Court. This same court seems poised to undo all that has been traditionally (in my lifetime) regarded as “inevitable progress” toward equal recognition and rights for unique personhood, poised instead to enshrine “christian values,” retreat from founding Enlightenment principles to medieval standards of law, promote permissible armed violence, and put certain men in charge of institutions and bodies.

It is highly ironic that this small, ultra-conservative group (or members thereof) proclaims a literal orthodoxy exists within the text of our constitution, where two centuries of jurisprudence has seemingly seen the text through a lens more flexible and moving with the times. It seems that this portion of the Supreme Court group is throwing modern America back to the time Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. Note, however: Less well known than his discussion of devils inhabiting the invisible world, Cotton Mather was also a scientist; he was an advocate for inoculation against smallpox, and he wrote a book proclaiming harmony between Newtonian physics and religion. Fact!

Any claims of original this, orthodox that are illogical excuses to proclaim a modern paterfamilias--which is what? This could only mean a totalitarian autocracy the likes of Stalinism. But who would the pater be? Certainly not Jesus, who used parables to teach illiterate people how to navigate oppression while maintaining cultural ethos and personal integrity. The words of Jesus don’t seem to matter at all to “christians" who call for the death of liberal secularism, control of the womb and the right of armed, white hooligans to menace and kill—what resonates more are texts from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Meanwhile, the average person, having been rendered inert by false notions of inevitability that are accompanied by a blizzard of disinformation, is thrown down a socially engineered rabbit hole. When and where will we land? Shall the landing be hard or soft?

There are 330 million sheeple and 6 dogs in a flock.

Who is the shepherd?

Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 2): Of Origins, Migrations, Memory and Nostalgia

 

Of all the various types of magical thinking, this particular variety is among the most frequent—and the most dangerous:

If only we could return to the way things were, everything would be all right.

If only that could possibly be true, in any way shape or form! This expression of longing, however, is most often the result of incomplete, in some cases manufactured, memory. 

Here is an example of what I mean. That collection of “books” that comes to many of us prepackaged in a single volume called The Bible, with all its errors of translation and transliteration, gaps, glosses and bridgework, contains in its first book not one but two creation stories. (As an aside, there are actually many other creation stories throughout the entire collection. Look to the Psalms, Hosea, Isaiah, Job, Proverbs,  Jeremiah, John and, of course, Revelation.) Most people who have read Genesis from start to end conflate the two stories, so that they become a single narrative. (The same thing happens with the Jesus birthday stories of the gospels.) What I mean to imply by mentioning this is that all such stories are afterward stories and not true accounts of any reality, particularly, as in similar stories from other cultural heritages, when anthropomorphism is applied to planets, stars or birds from the sky, ants and worms from below ground, or the fish in the sea. If you ever read any Greek mythology, even the most watered down versions, you understand what I mean. Said another way, we may have lived through our beginnings, but we were not there at our beginning.

As alluded to in the previous essay, people long for settled place and a sense of belonging in the midst of change and upheaval. This is not what the experience of living dishes out. 

The photo above was taken by me at the V Bar V Petroglyph Heritage site in Sedona, Arizona. Created over a long period by tribes identified today as Sinagua, this is a storyboard that could be applicable to many groupings of people, anywhere in the world, except that this particular storyboard is a product tied to a particular place and a particular time (roughly 1100 through 1400 CE). The storyboard is an almanac, depicting among other things seasonal changes and migration patterns that area dwellers followed. Not much, naturally, is known of the specific peoples who contributed to the storyboard; “mysteriously disappeared” is always the explanation given, but what we must read into that is a prolonged period of drought and/or invasion by unfriendly or warring tribes, as well as the ravages of colonization; anything might have triggered human migration from the area. What any person might be able to read (given a basic background in world mythology and South Western symbolism) on this magnificent stone cliff is the story of people in constant seasonal migration. During winter, groups would follow the herds of elk and other creatures, which would roughly end at the Spring thaw, at which time the People would shift their operations to rivers for fishing and collection of reeds for fashioning baskets, fishing traps and other useful items. In late Spring, the People would remove to flat or terraced fertile areas near water, in sheltered valleys or in the shadow of buttes, to plant, gather and build up stores for the winter. Throughout the area, there are fine examples of cliff dugout and masonry buildings, all of which were abandoned, for whatever reason.

At the site, we were given rough information by a white Forest Service docent, and then also an Indigenous Representative came (we were lucky; tribal representatives are not always available). People asked questions about the various symbols. The tribal Representative both knew and did not know. I remembered experiencing this shifting sort of vagueness on a decades previous trip to Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, where a question was asked about symbols in murals on the walls of the Mission Church. 

There are very specific reasons for this shifting between knowing and not knowing. First of all, there is a palpable, even visceral cultural memory of the violent ravages of colonization. Acoma was violently taken over by the Spanish, who then forced Christianity on the indigenous. There was a lot of resistance; one aspect of resistance to oppression is the presence of native symbols, discretely placed, under the radar. Telling strangers about that is like giving away personal identity. Secondly, because migration has always been a way seasonal way of life, and climate shifts play a huge role in that, many of the indigenous who live in a certain area now may have come from somewhere else; the tides of time and assimilation have sometimes washed away specific local cultural memory. 

The notion that the way we were is better than way things are now is a lie we tell ourselves when we feel unmoored from rootedness by the vicissitudes of an ever-changing world. The truth is, people want to feel rooted and complacent, but the reality is people cannot live that way for very long. The lands and cultures, the economies and governances are in constant fluctuation. There has never been the stasis our soul longs for. Snapshots of a carefree childhood are an incomplete knowledge of what it took for our parents to bring us to adulthood. Nietzsche called nostalgia a form of nihilism. In Will to Power, he wrote: 

A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning.

As I know from the practical experience of bringing up twins, nothing stays the same. Just at the very moment you come to understand one stage child development and how to manage within it, the next stage crashes like a wave that you are completely unprepared for and ill equipped to deal with, except that you must.  When I now see cute little kids walking to the park, it tugs at my heart, but I wouldn’t want to go through those first five years of childrearing again, at the age that I am now. 

As the sage named Jesus told a man called Nicodemus, everyone must be reborn again as from above. Nicodemus responds with a ridiculous question, offered on purpose, as in a Socratic/rabbinic dialogue, “You cannot mean that a person is to reenter his mother’s womb and be born again.” The sage responds metaphorically, “No one can enter the kingdom of the Divine unless they are born of water and the spirit.” By this metaphor, I take it to mean that, of course, there is no going backward, there is only forward movement and momentum toward a change in perspective, a maturation of understanding, enlightenment.

The desire to go backwards, aside from being impossible, is completely unnatural. As the survivors of the Surfside Condominium disaster could attest, as much as one might long to return to a place once known of as home, it might well no longer be there. The desire to go backwards is, to some extent, an expression of rage at being forced to adapt. 

But, we are intended to migrate, both physically and mentally, through the seasons, and through every stage of life. As T. S. Eliot relates in that famous poem of his, which echoes the sentiments of writers who came before him:

In my end is my beginning.

Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 1): Of Recipes, Rites and Action

 

In the beginning, when people were evolving, power was present in the place where one found oneself—by power, I mean the inherent dangers of a place, such as raging waters, sheer cliffs, and roaming gigantic flesh eating creatures. Survival, in such places, came to be seen as a certain sort of blessing, and the people who seemed to have better survival tools (or rather who seemed to make better choices) came to be revered. Some of those revered people, when asked to what they attributed their success at overcoming adversity, might have said something like, “I owe it to the benevolent spirit of the place,” by which they might have meant that they had learned by experience, trial and error, how to make good choices in a hostile environment. Indeed, some people are better suited to survival in certain places than others, and this can only be the result of an education by experience that teaches a type of discernment when it comes to making choices, especially when the unexpected happens. Such people, when they die, become the stuff of legends, and sometimes the legends of such people become so famous, they are turned into demi-gods.

Another scenario related to hero worship is the worship of forces of nature, such as water, air, fire, quaking earth, and the like, seen and unseen. Survival of the fittest when it comes to forces of nature is also an aspect of the power of place, where the unexpected happening can limit or endanger chances of survival.

Yet another scenario related to worship is the reverence of any thing or being that produces food. In such a scenario, corn is reverenced, wheat is reverenced, cows are reverenced, and so forth.

I will say that none of these models of reverence is inherently incorrect; these are all valid examples of reverence and respect. With reverence and respect to the powers of place, to the life-giving powers of food produced in the natural world, to exemplars of right discernment and choice, one is able to learn from past example, build on that with innovation, and survive, even to the point of producing offspring that carry the species forward in time toward newer innovation.

I will now identify an aspect of these primitive forms of reverence that I believe to be incorrect: magic.

This is not to say that magic and magical moments do not exist or that they are irrelevant. Magic is very real; it may be the most real thing there is. Magic goes back to the power of place and the power of the unexpected. Magic is an experience, an awesome and unexpected result. The error comes when people believe they can recreate a magical experience by performing a litany of rites, instead of living and experiencing, learning. The error occurs when people do not, as the heroic exemplars of the past did (or may have done), use and build on the knowledge acquired through experiences of surviving the powers of place and the unexpected to make choices, then accept responsibility for inauspicious outcomes. 

Simply put, one person’s choice might work for someone else, but this is not necessarily the case, and is most often not. In the words of a song Doris Day sang, but hated:

“Que sera, sera

Whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Que sera, sera

What will be, will be

Que sera, sera.”

The Great British Bake Off television series delivers a concrete example of what I am talking about. At some point, all the participants are given the same recipe to prepare. Amazingly, the results are different for every single participant. Why? They are all using the same ingredients in the same weather conditions, with roughly identical equipment. Why is it that the results can be so different?

Recipes (receipts, in old style) are scientific formulae from the realm of the practical cook. Someone made a tasty dish and invited friends to dinner. The friends really enjoyed the dish and wanted to recreate it in their own homes, so they asked for the receipt, which was a list of ingredients, most often, including a sketchy explanation of how the ingredients were to be combined. The cook had been preparing the dish for so long, it was second nature, and they figured another (experienced) cook would know what was intended.

Here is a recipe from “Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus [Estes]”:

Mushroom Sauce, Italian Style—(for macaroni, spaghetti, ravioli and rice)—a small piece of butter about the size of an egg. One or two onions, cut very small. About two pounds of beef. Let all brown. Prepare as you would pot roast. Add Italian dried mushrooms, soaked overnight in hot water, chopped in small pieces. Add about one-half can of tomatoes. Let all cook well. Salt and pepper to taste. Add a little flour to thicken. 

The beef, is it cubed or a slab of meat? Small, medium or large onions; yellow or red? What quantity of dried mushrooms? What size can of tomatoes are we talking about? Do you know how to make pot roast? Is this done in the oven or on the stovetop? What sized pot to use? Any added liquid, or do the tomatoes suffice? At what temperature? For how long?

The experienced, practical (that is, practicing) cook can take that receipt, procure the ingredients, and turn them into a delicious meal. In the hands of others, “results may vary.” And that is the truth of the matter, results do vary; life is not cast by lots, nor can the turn of a card predict outcomes—that is magical thinking. 

That’s all for now. Not sure when the next installment will be, but I can say that it will have something to do with praxis, religion, reason and governance.

Solstice

The shortest night

eases into the longest day;

the light can barely contain itself,

and the land heaves a sigh

of something quite pent up—

the interior landscape

exhales heat and humidity.

The birds take to song early,

take to flight soon after,

until the beating of wings

awakens the whole world

with inescapable rhythms.

Every stone, every branch,

even the driest blade of grass,

all awaken, as if from a long sleep,

and a longer dreaming.

Waves of warmth rise

in circular patterns off the ground,

as do the pollinators, 

flitting from blossom to blossom,

as if self-aware of greater liberties

to propel themselves upward,

despite the heavy weight 

of their cargos.

Everything rises on tiptoe, 

as if weightless,

expectant,

waiting

for the next coming,

Next,

only round the corner, now,

is all poised to bloom

and bear fruit, 

for, verily,

Life is the only choice

on this event horizon.

© 2022 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com