Light on the Page

The House of Love

The road is long unless the way is lightened. I turned a corner from a busy road and heard a shower of birdsong. Immediately my way was brightened. A mile or two and I might reach the house of love.

Love has its own home and is there all the time. It exists at the highest point above. I look down into a deep well and see the reflected light of stars. The stars have moved on but they have left their light where it fell.

I am a traveler. Love is encased within me. On earth I am alone: a part of love which heaven once let fall.

All my roads are hard without the song. I recreate it in my heart constantly. My journey’s end is not too far. The house of love – I’ll reach it soon and touch the climbing buds around its gate.

Well

So if all hearts were one we’d share a love

and never grow apart or live estranged;

but only at the highest point above

are spirits in their unity arranged.

Yet on the earth I’d dip into that well

where heaven keeps its certainties intact;

there stars have left their light just as it fell

and love remains with love as proven fact.

Traveler (for H.)

And love, encased within me, seeks its own -

a universe where love is shared by all;

but life on earth decrees I am alone,

a part of love which heaven once let fall.

The rocks and woods, the cloudless, dreaming skies

conceal my heart, an absent passer-by;

and everywhere it travels it still tries

to paint a part of heaven for the eye.

Gate

Then turning from the busy road I hear

a shower of birdsong, lightening the way;

a mile or two and I might come quite near

to love’s own home, and choose perhaps to stay.

But all my roads are hard without the song

which in my heart I always recreate;

I’ll come to love although the way is long

and touch the climbing buds around its gate.

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Having an Epiphany

At a certain season we grow tired of legs walking, eyes seeing, mouth eating and, yes, of ‘I being I’. We want to sleep, to dissolve, to dream of some sweet stream singing its peaceful song. As this is the season now, and the month is January, I connect this feeling strongly with the period which Christians refer to as Epiphany. We talk loosely about ‘having an epiphany’ or going through an epiphany experience. What does this mean? In essence, we’re talking about an experience of enlargement; a kind of mathematical translation whereby our normal inner form is temporarily expanded into its cosmic counterpart: an all-seeing, all-understanding eye on the world. Conversely, one could say that the cosmic ‘I’ contracts into its physical self and confers infinite release. This was the situation with regard to the baptism in the Jordan. In fact this was the exact intention of baptism by total submersion: to effect this ‘release’ of self into cosmos and cosmos into self. Therefore we can relate the experience back to the mundane desire to dream of some sweet stream singing its peaceful song.

Ah, to give up the body and this dull, repetitive life on earth! A feeling so typical of the first month of the year. Unfortunately, what the body represents is far, far deeper than we normally realize. You could say that we are ‘submerged’ in our bodily nature just as in the baptism we are submerged in water. It is far more difficult to climb out of it than dreams and wishes suppose. Through meditation and, for example, mindfulness on the passage of the seasons, you can gain a foothold, build a shelter in the world beyond the body, to which you can return through effort when you need to. But another possibility opens up. The mouth, as well as taking in food, is there for speaking; the eyes, apart from dully seeing, are there to revere – for revering; the legs, routinely walking, can also ascend; and the ‘I’, so much accustomed to simply being, can radiate outwards through its own nature. In short, the cosmic self can live, awakened, in the small being we consider to be ourself.

This is the greater meaning of the epiphany experience and one which translates our mundane normality into something of far greater significance.

Walk

One foot before another all day long

through all the pace and shuffle life can hold;

and then a sleep in lightness, peace and song,

till worlds have moved and new life can unfold.

I’m searching still for where my Maker named

the path I have to follow – set it straight;

for all my aberrations I’m not blamed:

I’ll walk once more the way He did create.

Companion

My legs will tire of walking, eyes seeing,

mouth eating and, yes, I being I too long.

I wish to quit them, sleep and dream of being

beside some stream which sings a peaceful song.

And yet my mouth can speak, my eyes revere,

my legs ascend, and I companion gods.

So with all this I’ll find that greater fear

that shapes me up to life where life applauds.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

The Rainbow Pavement

Too often this world can seem like a prison with no way out. Then it feels as if the days are filled with labor and night is like a lid or cover pressing down. The activities of the day pass like colors before our eyes but in night everything that is black and white in us starts to walk, preventing proper rest or release. This has a lot to do with the stress and materialistic values of our times. But there is another factor which is often over looked. The effects of stress and the struggle for worldly survival commonly include: loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, insecurity and inferiority complex. The world contrives to inflict these things on us mainly because it does not respect basic human needs and values – its systems honor those who go out and get, those who climb on others’ shoulders and push their way higher. We often think that the answer to low self-esteem and under-achievement is to gain a footing on this worldly ladder – to match or equal the go-getters in some small way. And small achievements in this way can be valuable. But what lives with the world dies with the world; what belongs to the world’s systems perishes when those systems crash. Can self-esteem really be based on this?

The problem is not just one of self-belief but belief in total. The world offers very little to stimulate true belief. Do we really believe that the answer to feeling small and crushed is to enlarge yourself? This amounts to nothing more than a kind of body-building. No – if you feel belittled or disparaged in some way the answer – ultimately – is to have something to believe in. Something which is larger than yourself, which understands you intimately and which is truly worth believing in. In the end it’s the moral-divine universe which fits the bill – the one which is related to every single part of our existence, which understands our feelings of smallness, of disaffectedness, of disempowerment. There is something in the colossal, divine universe which is so tender and intimate it can take you by the hand and lead you on to worthiness and value. The hand of an angel, if you like. Or, rather, something which shows you how to take yourself by the hand and lead you from the prison. But the essential feature is belief because only belief can draw us out into the grandeur of existence and make our own being sufficient or adequate. ‘Body-building’ is not really an alternative.

Unless you have the kindness of an environment which offers you belief – and there are many different kinds and forms of belief – then it can be hard to come by. Example is important – the example of people who deeply believe in the value of human life and its connectedness to the divine-moral world. And, in my opinion, we urgently need to rearrange the structures of our social life so that they do not crush people and rob them of their self-esteem.

Then I see a world where the gentle colors of the day continue right on into dusk; where the rainbow pavement does not disappear; where sleep and truth reveal another land to which this world is just an empty husk.

Squirrels

A squirrel has no fear of any height -

though the tree scrapes the moon and sun and stars;

it will not let the darkness cause it fright

nor lose a minute’s sleep through winter’s powers.

But fear and darkness living in the mind

will shake your branch and show to you the drop;

they’ll let your seeing nightmares make you blind

and leave you without sleep – while squirrels hop.

Wraith

Two thirds are color, one third black and white,

and what I’m made of perjures my belief;

the colors rise like memories of light,

the black and white steals it like any thief.

My days are mostly colored in with faith

and light escorts me till the hours of sleep;

but darkness comes and whitens like a wraith,

disturbing dreams and waking up the deep.

Husk

And colored is the light of all my days,

while black occludes the stillness of the night;

now soft belief can guide me on the ways

which need a gentle footfall to be right.

Then I can lead my own self by the hand

and walk the rainbow pavement into dusk;

there sleep and truth reveal another land

to which this world is just an empty husk.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

The Golden Stairway

The golden stairway is a clear and vivid image in my mind. It’s there for me. Through the practise of innumerable meditations, rather fewer good intentions carried out; hopes allowed to grow, faith un-deferred, acts of love appearing above ground like the proverbial groundhogs testing the air for spring; through all these things the golden stairway appears. Does it happen in a moment? No – a lifetime.

But at the foot of every stairway lies.. a well. A stairwell. What depths are in the well! Its inky darkness conceals so much! But first you see the image of the stairway descending in reflection; descending to places your inner being knows just as well as those at the top of the stair. We’ve been there before, in a time of innocence, before we ever gathered up the hopes, the opportunities of faith and acts of love. What lives in the inky darkness? A thousand hurts, a life of things unfair. And every one of them as real as meditations, as good intentions.

The apparent quandary in spiritual growth is how to transcend realities, how to make the higher appear out of the lower. In fact it doesn’t happen this way. I gaze into the well; I muse and fret. Then slowly I see a golden shape appear. I realize that only a being formed of gold can ascend a golden stairway. The stairway is continuous, as it reaches downwards and upwards. The golden shape is myself – the being I create out of everything I try, and dare, and do. This being can live among the hurts as well as the heights. The well is filled with tears but the golden stairway leads both ways.

Fly

A spirit being on a spiritual stair -

what words, to speak presumption, or attest

the living truth: the reader should beware

of phrases never climbed and goals just guessed.

But tested thoughts and words themselves ascend,

each one a golden step to higher mind:

I won’t presume to speak what I can’t mend,

the fallen heart whose truth I’ll fly to find.

Climber

But at the foot of any golden stair,

a well, and in its inky darkness lies

a thousand hurts, a life of things unfair -

and only he can climb whose sorrow flies.

I sit before this well to muse and fret

and sometimes in its waters I can see

a shape of gold whose light alone will let

the climber in me climb – the shape is me.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Fall and Ascent

The Fall is present in us and likewise the Ascent. If I look at birds I see – rather unscientifically – that they are kept aloft by faith and love. I see nothing else – they’ve gained and earned their wings by pure and simple acceptance of the higher power. They rest in the hand of God continually. And in their song I feel a stair that rises up to the divine again – it transports me in invisible, elemental fifths and thirds. This is at least poetically correct.

The human ‘Fall’ is a rather more complicated matter. Is it scientific? Ah! I would rather it were not true. We no longer rest in the hand of God in the same way. But the sound of the birds creeps into the heart, love paints pictures in our minds which will not be denied. Sadness and infinite longing. Infinite, infinite longing which returns to the mind and to the will and moves us to climb back again. How? With freedom and with choice, with the perspicacity to know that science and religion combine in the song of a bird. There is no truth worth having that is not lifted by love back into the realm we fell from.

Are we not there all the time? All the time we are tutored by such things as unaided flight or by the power of song which also ascends like flights of golden-carpeted stair. These things are in us, alive, as poetic truths. And love, always love, is in the hand which holds the bird aloft and in the thread of music, now light, now dark, which moves through the human heart.

Fly

Now every part of me is sent in prayer

and what remains is music of the birds;

and every note transports me on a stair

composed of elemental fifths and thirds.

Each bird has won its wings through faith and love

and sings its salutation to the sky;

am I the last to reach that god above

who gives all feathers honesty to fly?

Fount (For H.)

The moon has sometimes fallen from her sphere,

appearing wan and jaundiced, out of time;

then sorrows spill out in the now and here

and lovers empty out their love in mime.

So sicken with the season, time will count

its minutes in a metronomic beat;

the fallen will climb back up to the fount

and love with love will choose its place to meet.

Kissed

I fell from heaven once and now again,

without the love that made all heaven mine;

the first time I was pinched and like all men

plunged into form and worldly design.

And now I worship distantly the face

that once touched mine with lips as soft as mist;

I feel with fingers absently the place

which love once understood and heaven kissed.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.

Confluence

The savor of life is very much connected with doing the right – the hidden right, not the ostentatious one which acts in order to be seen. But in reality the hidden is spread out around us all the time, like a clear and shining light – like an alternative world. Time itself runs in two dimensions: the one of nature, where events happen and pass as naturally as day passes into night; and the moral continuum where only spiritual beings may walk. This, in the end, is proof that the human being is a spiritual being: life loses its savor – the salt goes out of the salt – if as a person you fail to pay heed to the pull exerted by the hidden world. For the poet this world is the source of all true verbs and nouns. For other professions it will have its equivalent significance.

Yes, there is any amount of possibility for the ambitious to accumulate possessions and signs of success. But these all fall into the category of what passes into night. And on their own they do not constitute the savor of the salt – they simply form the body of the salt, its crystalline structure. How many a person do you see whose life may be rich, even famous, but who appears completely dried out? Of course it’s not for the idle onlooker to judge another person’s life, but in many cases you can’t help feeling that someone has abandoned the living current in favor of accumulation.  Needless to say the material world trades on this.

The point at stake is doing the right – seeing the opportunities within everything you do to serve the hidden world. You may be able to see where other people stand within that world at a particular time – it is the world of confluences, of movement and true opportunity. You might be able to play a part, to free an obstacle – in whatever way is best-suited to your abilities. Perhaps it’s just a question of being a human being at the right moment. But for the duration of that activity you are a spiritual being in a spiritual world, the salt has its savor, and you have done something which will not pass into the night.

All this might seem obvious: doing the right is not a new concept. But the world is hurtling down a passageway which leads only to darkness. It wants to obscure the inner heart and mind. To be aware of where you stand in relation to the world of light and life is to create a future and to prevent the world itself from passing into the night.

Mattered

Now here I am in muttered imitation

of everything that better sings its song -

the careless bird which knows no limitation,

the stately stars with voices clear and strong.

Yet in their silence they acknowledge me,

whose line and verse is learned outside of time,

whose song is neither mattered in degree

nor layered with earth in sequence or in rhyme.

Better

So if my salt should lose its trusted savor

and leave the taste of life distressed and flat,

I’ll search again for its more subtle flavor:

the crystalled sea and shimmering salt-flat.

So little time is left to do the right

inside a life as brief as nature’s verse;

but in a single morning chance may light

to lift the better from the sunken worse.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.