Tag: spirituality

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Warped, Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America

Warped ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #325

I enter a cathedral
As if into warped space
Not warped as a physicist might think
But as in how a mystic might think
That is, a spiritual space or dimension
Bent, folded and manipulated
To conform to a specific configuration
Long ago transcribed into books
From collective memories
Predating written language

Aside from a certain wonder
At the passion and dedication
To the exquisite expression
Of humanity’s greater achievements
In art and architecture
A cathedral reminds me
Of the power of group thinking
For both good and ill
How this can become a tight leash
On an individual whose spirit
Simply refuses to conform

But it also reminds me
Of the exultant satisfaction
I experienced
When I finally broke the leash
Chose my own path
And found my way to a spiritual space
Which conformed to me

Not that I am without
My own warped sense of spiritual dimension
But the distortion is familiar to me
Has meaning for me
And brings me to a place of peace

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Disorder in the Wake, Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo Ferry, Georgia Strait, British Columbia, Canada

Disorder ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #312

I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake

Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation

Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake

Of a vessel underway

And I am always underway
Though always looking back

Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others

Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility

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Golden Bowl, Bridge Studios, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Light ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #267

Once the light entered the bowl
Something magical happened
Something I’ll probably
Never fully understand

The light coalesced
Hardened
Formed swirling tendrils
Of incandescence

Well
I understood one thing

Light was alive

No
Not alive

Conscious

And what I was witnessing
Was the comingling
Of unmanifested being
One each to a tendril

Swimming as if a school of fish
In a golden bowl
Struck just the right way
By the sun

And then it was gone
Light
Was merely light
Again

But some trick of the cosmic tail
Had let me in on the secret
Because in an instant
I’d known

Light
Is love
And love
Is light

When we are unmanifested
In this purest spirit form
We know this as surely as
The necessity of a breath

We know it in a way
A brain cannot grok
But our manifest purpose
The meaning of our existence

Is to remember

And for a moment
Looking into a sunlit bowl
I remembered

A glimpse of the unknowable
Out of the corner of my eye

A memory I struggle to keep
Every day

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Old Sound, Britannia Beach, Howe Sound, British Columbia, Canada

Before ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #190

I float
Gently
Back in time

To an age before
This silence of spirit
And its sorrows
These days of hardness
And slight assurances

Back to a time
Of no small beauty
When time itself
Came in an abundance
Applied to the creation
Of wondrous things
While wonder was divinely inspired

Meaning was no fleeting connection
And purpose a life’s rendition

Before profit and growth and ROI
Became ends and means and purpose

A time long before
The remains of this pier
Were ever a pier
Before ever a ship
Sailed these waters
Before any European left the shores
Of a land not yet named Europe

Gently floating
I let waves and bird song
Dominate the frantic race
Of engines on the highway behind me
Breathe the ocean deeply in
Exhale millennia of progress

For a moment, at least
I exist in a time before
All that I am
Was ever possible

Can I let this self die
This day
Allow a time before
To lead me
To a time that follows

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Doorways, Forbidden City, Beijing, China

Courage ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #180

We span the ages
you and I
across all sense
of time and space
our stories twine

And I can’t say
where it began
or where it ends
or if it ever will

It drives you to
the edge of mad
(where you found me)
but with your ever
growing faith
it’s clear

Life is not so
rational
as you would like

Discontinuous
In fact

Time sometimes goes
from front to back
while space folds in
upon itself
and plops you down
in the middle of
you know not
what

Yet still you stand
amidst the fray
(such dark embrace)
to write these words
you promised me

Love is not so
rational
as you would like

But its beauty
drives you still