A Prayer for Peace

Dear Divine, Life-Giving Being,

We call to you from the silence of despair over our war-torn world.

You gave us the gift of peace, and we have never known what to do with it; it passes our understanding. Because we have no blueprints with which to define how peace is to be lived, we need you to guide us to new ways. Open for each of us the wisdom eye, and show us how to remove war from our thoughts, remove war from our words, remove war from our hearts. Fill our minds and our words and our hearts with new ways of communication and cooperation, for the sake of all people.

But, meanwhile, be with the children, be with the mothers, be with the fathers, and all the brothers and sisters, for that is indeed what we all are to one another; be with us and fill us with the understanding of peace that you meant for us to have. Lead us to know that peace is an action verb dictating the right way to life. 

Amen.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Discourse on Discourses

Searching for place,
grasping at forms,
venerating saints:
a waste of time.

Undifferentiated singularity,
free from subject and object,
apart from either, or and more:
this is streaming reality.

Plotted on no map,
this stream defies cartography,
a being different for every being:
do not ask for a guide.

There is no teaching,
there is no sage;
there is no mind,
there is no void.

You never heard me,
for I did not speak;
I would tell you to leave,
but you were never here.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Ruach

Four walls, a roof,
unremarkable;
but they hold at bay
the water and the wind,
and make sounding boards
for our songs.

Lightning flashes outside,
but the four walls reverberate,
not with rolling thunder,
not with water and wind,
but with the music of song,
of our songs.

Later, we singers will exit
into the water and the wind,
into the music of light and rain;
but those walls will still tingle
with the weather of our making,
with our songs.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Rainy Day Pancakes

1 cup flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1/4 cup wheat germ
handful flax seeds
3 tblsp sugar
1 & 3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk (plus whatever it takes to get the batter to the consistency you like...)

Mix well. Apply coconut oil to griddle. Measure out rounds, as you will. When they bubble, flip 'em.  Pull them off when they are browned on both sides.

We butter them and pour on pure Maple syrup.

(Kids LOVE them!)

ENJOY with any of the following: hot coffee, hot cocoa, crisp bacon, fresh berries or other fruit.

A Bell Rings

A bell rings,
and I am detached from the mountainside;
I tumble down,
like happy water pours downstream,
landing in a heap at the foot.

A bell has rung,
and I am plunged into the depths;
a return to first things,
a rebirth.

A bell has been rung,
and being is now detatched
from old ways of seeing,
from old ways of being,
and I must rediscover life and love.

A bell has been rung in me,
so that I may know the truth:
disharmony is unnatural;
all that exists desires true union.

Let the bell toll, for me and for thee!

Let the tone find center and radiate outward,
let us begin again, with new eyes,
our ascent of the mountain,
pouring up hill, like happy water.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Spring Rain

The gentle music of rain drops
patters across the roof to wake me,
cooling the mind,
clearing the air,
quenching the parched earth,
drenching plum blossom
and rose, alike,
in liquid pleasure,
perfect raiment.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Fainting

Shock of pain,
then shock of shock,
and a struggle to keep the lamp steady and lit;
but darkness overtook, nonetheless.

An intervening interval,
until remembering remembering,
and to remember now again.

Remembering now,
light returned,
not all at once,
but in pieces pixel-like,
flickerings fluttering on,
cascading upwards
as from the bottom of a canvas
to the top of a landscape,
until the world was back,
as painted by the mind’s eye.

What of that interval,
one cannot know for certain;
but the soul remembers of the darkness
a relief at finding restful peace,
and a longing to remain there.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen