Called Out

Out of the silent dust

was I called to be

Blown by some sacred breath
into the spring of existence,
particles stirred by
quaking earth and fire,
drowned by storm,
invisibly formed

Some distant song
carried its precious mass
through the void

“Who will go for us?”

Ears to hear, then unexpected response,
“Send me!”

And just as I Am is,
I became further I,
germinated,
embodied,
and released
with eyes to see,
ears to hear,
breath with which
to make voice
into the matchless
universe,
legs with which
to wander the shadowed valley,
arms and hands with which
to grasp, to gain, to give

According to each day
according to every season
according to any moment,
of which all are new
births under different light,
searching, and seeking,
wandering and weeping,
struggling,
learning
being,
serving,
loving,
in vital witness,
as ever be can be,
woven as am I of paradoxical parameters,
warp and weft, contradictory

[right and wrong,
sickness and health,
real and false,
free and oppressed,
generous and miserly,
careful and careless,

studious and ignorant,
shy and outgoing,
loud and silent,
joyful and angry,
studious and perfunctory,
color, full and less,
visible and invisible,
and so on, ad infinitum]

This song,
mine and ours,
knows no end
but partial ends forthcoming

by and by
—one knows not the wherefore nor why,
only that existence presses forward,
revolving and evolving,
perhaps toward,
and even sowing,
knowing

[shall ever I do?
shall ever I know
what I is, am and ever was
or why,
and if then,
what next might be/is,
what might be beyond
or what beyonding might bond?]

And when the Song calls me back
to that valley of bones
that river of dust,

Be, as I’ll be
marked:
Return to Sender,
Am I to I Am,
Thine to Thee.

© 2019 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

(A meditation for lent on International Women's Day)

In Mortality

By its four corners, something like a large sheet was gently lowered,
and a voice was heard by one, some, or perhaps many,
“It is good, all is good;
no worries.”

There, on a blooming field of goodness, a fading into night,
the beginning of an end setting forth a next start;
if darkness before dawn is an eye
to a different sort of tomorrow,
surely there is a fluttering of beating wings.

And in the melting of granulation into a murmur of revelation,
wondering about all that came before this gaping emptiness,
great thirst, and heaviness of light,
was all possible done?
Is the stove off or on?

Something echoes as through a corridor,
can it be music?
So unlike any remembered sonic partaking
or moment of music-making,
it seems unlikely.

This may be a dream that is not
(though so many have thought)
or perhaps a movement in the planetary cycle,
pitting every ounce of strength
against every pound of relaxation
to power the stars of night
and set the moon toward reflection.

“We love you, we love you!”
is heard, perhaps not by word,
or perhaps it is a bird,
chirping on the ledge,
in song or pledge.

Here, on this blooming field of goodness,
is the healing place and time;
as She said, “All will be well.”

What a thing it is,
oh, what a thing,
this on, honored one,
on, onward on,
onward on,
on.

© 2016 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Starlight Ballroom

With a subtlety
bordering on flagrancy,
every outer contour
of awareness
opens to the great dance.

So many strive
against conformity
by conforming;
proclaiming their uniqueness,
they spiral inwardly toward implosion.

Can you keep a secret?

This world of light and dark,
of beauties seen and unseen,
does not feel any dominion we claim,
and only just tolerates our presence.

In ever expanding waves of motion,
patterns weave an imperfect math,
advancing the latest musical form,
one poised to rend the fabric of time
and make everything new.

Given the choice,
I would rather unravel
into starlit dance.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Very Latest in Death and Nostalgia

I know exactly where I was when I found out Robin Williams was dead. I was at home, having just posted on Facebook. Another friend had just heard about it on the news and posted what she had heard. Seconds later, Robin Williams’ death was “virally trending.”

I was hit hard by this news, and I know many people were, nationally and internationally, but particularly in California and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Mr. Williams was raised and where he honed is incredible talent. This news was on the heels of other celebrity deaths, and followed by other celebrity deaths, as well as the shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, MO.

All in all, it was a very depressing week. Everything in social media filled a spectrum from “death and depression” to “cute animals” to “don’t judge what you don’t understand.” The newspapers were not far behind that mode of “trending,” focusing on failures of all sorts (building failures, political failures, police failures; in short, failures of judgment in all forms).

When I went to the grocery store, I could not help but notice that the magazine racks were filled with retrospective magazines on Elvis Presley (died, August 16, 1977), Jerry Garcia (died August 9, 1995), Bob Hope (died July 27, 2003), Princess Diana (died August 31, 1997) and others. Robin Williams will be the next honoree of one of these, I am sure. And I have to say, this is very sad. We loved these people who led very public lives, but the inability of our culture to let go after celebrities have died is really unhealthy.

We are being manipulated by this constant parade of celebrity deaths, and we don’t even realize it. If you think about just those stars listed above, you realize that most people 14 years old and younger have no idea who those people are, don’t know their contributions to culture, and what’s more, aren’t interested in finding out. Why should they?

But for those of us who do know and remember these people, the fact of their mortality is a reminder to us of our own.

Friedrich Nietzsche posited that our harboring of nostalgia is a way of using the past to forge an idea of the future. Never mind that any nostalgic view of the past is utterly inaccurate and could never pass muster today, much less be put to work tomorrow.

“But wait!” as the young set says, “that is exactly what is happening!” And, to a great extent, it is true. Nietzsche would be railing against the same things, if he were alive today, as in those years when he was alive and his thought was in full flower. And that is very, very sad, indeed.

What most people don’t realize is this is a psychological and philosophical condition, called by Nietzsche ressentiment. The condition is characterized by defeatist feelings, cynical attitudes, belief that institutions and individuals are hostile and indifferent; this condition results in expressions of fundamentalism on all levels, as if returning to a mythical past, characterized by either extreme authoritarianism or anarchy, would be the solution to every problem.

Look at the unrest in our world. You can see it in every tabloid, not to mention in the more legitimate news media. Celebrity wars. Male culture bashing female culture. Heterosexual culture bashing homosexual culture. Race wars, religion wars, wars of greed and ambition, ad hominem wars of indifference and stupidity are being waged all day, everyday, everywhere. We say to our dead heroes, “rest in peace,” while fervently praying for a peace we cannot hope to achieve on this planet while we are in the grips of ressentiment, where every gesture is negatively judged, where the innocent are blamed for the bad things that happen to them, where corruption seems to trump all those human values we claim to uphold, where we decide to join ghettos, rather than learn to live with in harmony others and the environment, so that we can get together to solve real problems.

When I see on Facebook side-by-side images of Hitler and a liberal politician, with nearly matching quotes, I think, wow! This is really sick! Can the person who shared this really believe the sum of that life is equal to the sum of this one?

Not only is it crude. Not only is it simplistic. It is malevolent. Unfortunately, I think some of the people who post these things really do believe them; some are highly educated people, but they are frustrated by something they cannot even properly articulate. There is a festering of impotent rage in our generation, and to a great degree this rage is an inherited legacy. “Teach your children well” to some people meant passing on a rageaholic culture of negativity to the next generation. As Nietzsche pointed out, this is an individual’s act of revenge upon society.

Having grown up among people who were trying to make the world a better place, one that is color-blind, equitable, and harmonious, I must admit this is disillusioning and disappointing. What kind of a world have I brought my children into? What sort of people are these that build a life and behave in it such that machines and money mean more than the lives of people?

The media that daily pumps out such negative drivel exists to bring us down, to keep us cowed, to amaze us with our own stupidity, to get us all fighting with each other. That must be the intent, otherwise, why publish it? If we are all fighting with one another, then it is easy to bring out the guns and fill up the prisons, is it not?

Faith is an empty word unless it leads people to build a temple to Love, inhabited by people performing good deeds and working at breaking down barriers, to nurture and feed the hungry, to employ the willing and able, to build people (all people) up to something better than what the past offered. I don’t know much, but I am sure we cannot rest in peace until we conquer our natural tendency to self-destruction. We cannot honor the dead when we are such a tortured mess of ambivalence and misanthropy that we cannot honor the living by doing right by them.

I see the very latest in the world of death and nostalgia, and I do not like it. It makes me feel shame for the whole human race. I do not want to go down that path—for the way is down, indeed.

I hope you feel the same way. I hope you will add yourself to movement and uprising. It could be that I mean “a movement” or “an uprising” – but what I am saying is do not go down. Go up, and bring someone along with you! Let us all rise to our very best potential, however we can. That is honestly the only way to honor the experience of life and all the wonderful people that have lived it.

How Does The Garden Grow?

We are miracles of being. We are packets of life that burst into a world that is often unprepared for us, although it is furnished with the potential to serve all our needs.

As adults, perhaps we spend too much time weighing the potential of life to serve us, while not enough time in service to that integral nature that sustains miracle upon miracle, and has done since opposite somethings began to attract, in those first unprecedented moments of creation.

For sentient individuals, this span of existence, in whatever form we take, is so brief and brutally free, while filled with such inexplicable beauty in each moment that is our now, I wonder why any person would isolate themselves in the virtual.

Reality and realism are a calling. Immersion in what-is, above what-can-be, is an essential landscape I fear is missing from the lives of many. This is not to say that what-can-be is unimportant or missing from the world. What-can-be lies within a limitless field of creative potential.

Sadly, most people frame their lives, whether they will admit so or not, within prisons of what they deem are “inevitabilities.” Mortality aside, nothing is inevitable. Therefore, all things are possible.

What-can-be could be seen as that which you grow in your garden. What will your garden contain? What will you grow? From whence shall the seeds be harvested? How often will you water the young seedlings that sprout after you have the seeds you have acquired? What culture will you grow? How will it impact the world?

These odd questions are vital, yet rarely directly addressed in our upbringing—the upbringing that shows us primarily how life must serve us. Parents too seldom pass to their children the knowledge of culture—where it comes from and how it is perpetuated—beyond the mere experience of it; I think, sometimes, we haven't learned all that is required to bring culture to birth and nurture it; to build and maintain it; to pass it on to its next conservatorship.

To think this way seems beyond so many people. Artists perhaps, may have the greatest potential and sensitivity to the philosophical implications of life in service to beauty. Too many others feel that sort of dedication is someone else’s domain and responsibility. Too many others believe that culture is and should remain free, and by that they mean, existing without investment. Somewhat like parents who expect schools to train their children to be good people, yet invest nothing or little in seeing to that themselves. Somewhat like people who decide how to vote based on what they read in checkout counter tabloids or what they see on Fox News.

Is this how the garden grows, the garden of you and of all of us?

From one impulse through many impulses, from one voice through many voices, from one set of hands through many sets of hands, your life flows. Infinite messages flow through all your experiential pathways. To which and to how many shall you respond? And what will be the result of that response or interaction?

Life is a series of callings within the single, yet infinite, garden of being. Yours is to choose. “Life is all about choices,” a friend once reminded me.

The paradox of life is that it supports you while you support it.

How will you nurture what has nurtured you? This is a vital question, a real question.

Everything depends on your answer.