Flickerings

Sun,
insatiably in combustion;
our best metaphor
of that eternal blending:
being.

I Am
but one of billions of strands
of the same growing shape
that startles darkness.

We hang together
center of the core,
there we melt,
for opposites attract.

Fire and ice,
they blend as we do,
somethings into nothing,
into something else again.

Such meetings are flickerings;
they light up life.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

Some Reflections on Time and Technology

We live in a culture where we can have everything now.

We can talk to anyone, no matter where we are or when—even while we are operating a motor vehicle or anesthetizing a patient for a surgical procedure. Have we lost our senses of self-control and anticipation?

Partners go to the grocery store with a list, but still need to call home from the aisles to clarify or to question—sometimes more than once in the same trip. Have we lost the ability to exercise judgment?

We crave connection with people, and yet, it seems easier for some to send electronic mail messages, than to converse directly to a person on a phone. This gives rise to a trail of electronic messages, backing up in the incoming mailbox, because someone couldn’t have a conversation that would have taken a few minutes. One has to follow the trail of messages, even if only to see that one doesn’t need to respond. This takes time. Conferences are sometimes inadvertently run in this fashion. Real time conferences would seem to be more efficient, but no one has time to meet.

Those who send electronic messages, eschewing the opportunity of speaking directly with a person or a group, sit at the other end of the technological device(s), waiting impatiently for a reply.

Electronic messages take time to compose and send, to read and answer. You have to turn on an electronic device to do that. The device needs to be charged with energy. Is this the most efficient means of communication, if , for example, you live across the street from the person you are trying to contact? Perhaps we should think of the waste of time that emerges when we tally all the time we spend on the contraptions, rather than out in the world, talking and touching, seeing and breathing.

Words of wisdom that you heard, because they were spoken by particular a person in a particular way, by means of a certain emphasis, the inclusion of a smile, or some other nuance, stick with you your whole life. This is true even if the precise memory of the actual event, when the words were uttered, has faded. This is timelessness, that words can carry themselves across the span of a lifetime, and call to mind a living, breathing person.

Technology is wondrous, but it is a robber of time, as well a thin veneer of connection and communication. We have reduced our discussions to cute quips and sound bytes. I wonder, can words of wisdom stick in our head because they were sent to us via email? Have our thoughts also been reduced, to fit the medium? And our spirits?

This is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it, as I am thinking on it.

This life is an unfolding of time. While we are here, we fill our moments with the imprint of our existential experience, our struggles, our failures, our rebirths, our touch, our glances, our conversations, our laughter and our songs. This is time, and takes time to be well and truly spent.

The reduction of this wonder of time, unfolding through our very being, into sound bytes and badly typed quips saves nothing, says nothing and is worth very little. It will all be deleted in a second; which shows how important it all is in the scheme of things.

Brewing: My Continuing Adventures in Herbalism

Mugwort, plantain which has opened from the east, lamb's cress, attorlothe [possibly black nightshade], chamomile, nettle, wood sour apple, chervil and fennel, old soap; work the herbs into powder, mix with the soap and the apple's juice. Make a paste of water and of ash; take the fennel, boil in the paste and warm it with the mixture when he puts on the salve, and before and after. Sing that charm on each of the herbs thrice before he prepares them, and on the apple also, and sing into the mouth of the man and both the ears and on the wound that same charm before he puts on the salve.

Believe it or not, this is an ancient recipe for an herbal healing salve, including the prescribed method of treatment. It appears at the very end of a long poem in Old English, known as the Nine Herbs Charm. In this poetic incantation, both Woden and Christ are mentioned, linking the pagan world to the Christianized. The incantations are supposed to be made three times respectively over each of the nine herbs, as they are added into the recipe, in order to maximize the potency of the medicine.

I mention this by way of introduction to my topic for today.  I have become something of an amateur herbalist in recent years, and I find herb lore very interesting—although, I have to say that the lore is not more interesting than what herbs can actually do when you use them.

The reason I got deeper into this whole herb thing is because I love to cook. At some point,  I received the handsome gift of a bread machine. I loved that machine. I wore it out, and had to get a second one. I now bake nearly all the bread my family eats. The kids particularly love the rosemary French bread that I make. One week, I decided to make that and also make a loaf of pumpernickel. If it had not been for this double loaf adventure, I would never have noticed something interesting about rosemary.

The loaves had been made in the same day, but the pumpernickel was made after the rosemary French bread. The loaves are stored in zip-locked plastic bags. A few days later, the remaining pumpernickel started to develop mold. The rosemary French bread did not develop mold. And I have never experienced this particular loaf to do so, but I just supposed that was because we were consuming the bread so fast.

I don’t think that is the reason, however; I think I discovered by experience that rosemary acts as a natural preservative in this situation. When I looked in my various books on herbs, I didn’t find this specific information, although rosemary is listed in some volumes as being an antioxidant and, in others, as having antibacterial properties.

This led me to try brewing the dried herb as an infusion, just to satisfy a curiosity I had. The taste was unexpectedly lovely!

I then added a few more ingredients to the rosemary and re-brewed: anise seed, elder flowers, rosehips, mullein, hyssop and peppermint. I created this seemingly peculiar mixture because my son has a yucky cough. I had an intuition, based on previous experience with these other herbs, that this mixture would be helpful. Several days later, he was still coughing, but without as much of the yuck part; he is not coughing up nearly as much phlegm. And, the infusion has a delicate flavor, is not at all horrid—so a child will drink it willingly, particularly if a bit of honey is added.

I pass this story on to you because it is a good personal account. Please note that I do not set myself up to advise you on what herbs are best for you to use—this is something you must discover on your own. Herbal usage is, I continue to discover, very personal and very subtle. Some herbs that are indicated for certain conditions just simply do not work for everyone. I discovered years ago that Echinacea does not work for me, though I can derive similar benefits from Holy Basil.

Experimentation with common herbs is wholeheartedly advised, as long as good sense is also exercised; herbs that you know to be dangerous probably should not enter your home, much less your body. A general safety rule is this: if it is something you would cook with and eat in food, then by all means, make use of it in other ways than in cookery. 

The only caution I would offer is that there is a lot of misinformation and conflicting information available on the internet; in the rush for content to populate every single page hawking some sort of product or service, the so-called noosphere is filled with shameless duplications of the same articles all over the place (authored originally by whom, one wonders?), and they do not necessarily inform you in a useful way or accurate way.


If you want to get into herbs, you need to do three things: (1) get into your garden; (2) consult books on herbs (whatever you have on hand, or references at the library); and (3) brew. I keep a handy notebook and make notations of the various herbs I have used, and if they have been combined with other herbs, what circumstance that combination was used for, and what the results were.


I am sitting here with a warm cup of something good. How about you?

Yawning

Stifling a yawn,

I felt my body reset itself, cat-like,
to normal flexibilities, albeit aging,
and stretch to realign with the more fluid now.

Perhaps the yawn does not prefigure boredom,
but rather points toward a yearning:
for movement,
for light and lightness,
for that which will not settle,
but take up any stray parths
and rise up in winding spirals
of exploratory spirit
of muses and musing,
and discovery.

Whereas boredom cannot reach beyond itself,
light crosses borders,
gathers creative dust,
and sings the planets and stars to life.

Let my yawn be bent on travel,
calling forth invisible wings
to open out and,
stretching fluidly,
to carry me upward and
liberate me radially,
from my inner world
to all outer worlds.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Advent

When the feasting is done,
the workers return to the fields,
the householders return to the hearth;
the boards are swept of the leavings,
and actions return to sameness.

Is this indeed our lot?
Is this what all the celebration was for?

That being abounds in sameness
is a misapprehension
of our purpose.

The Divine One sighs.

Celebration,
it should be a sending forth
into revolution,
nothing less than
a miracle of conception,
that will be nurtured
with warm and loving hands,
an alchemy of all the elements
and all that is unseen.

Life cannot be measured,
cannot be calculated
into minutes of this,
hours of that.

Life is even beyond
the measure of the mead
that raises warmth to the cheek,
that raises the inner spirit toward
the unexpected.

Life is the journey,
pushing beyond all boundaries
of the known and comfortable,
to a place wholly unknown.

There is no arrival,
but expect the abyss
to be open before you,
waiting.

A divine bridge will appear
for all who have the courage
to step forward.

This is the morning after,
the Dawning Day of Next,
wherein we meet God
in the work of creation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Pointed

Words and numbers are pointers
leading to infinity,
asking to be traveled long and well,
poetically.

Points are not fixed;
they cannot stand still,
but shimmer and fly,
depending on the weather.

The relative atmospheric pressure
depends upon Mind and Soul,
and an apprehension of Tomorrow,
the child of time and timelessness.

Gathering creative wool,
the planets roll in search of nextness,
being points not fixed,
bur rather poetical.

Meanwhile, the unspeakable mystery
casts its pointed light on All,
making visible the invisible
for all that are poetically ready.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Sabbath Rest

Oh, for a quiet day,

a day where there is no rush at all,
because there is no place to go
and nothing that needs doing.

Oh, for a quiet day,
and a ramble over frost-frizzed fields,
tracing a circle that begins and ends
at a hallowed hollow called home.

On that quiet day,
we can contemplate all we have done
and all we that might yet to do,
within the spectrum of desires.

But this is quite a day,
for there is no expectation of doing,
accomplishment, planning or plotting;
today, all that is beside the point.

Oh, bless this cold, quiet day!
Day where all the world finds rest
away from all trials and tasks, to bask,
in the unexpected warmth of the sun.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen