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.

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.

Night opens. Stars pour in.

Wind and rain shine

as dreams in clear sky will do.

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

So let me come back to you, the stones

in my pockets, the vast width of flowering life

shining in my eyes, the coughing, shambling

animals arriving in my gait.

Let me come with the human being

rising out of my limbs, ascending

to the prayerful spaces. Let me come

and welcoming be welcomed in my turn.

A very happy Christmas,

from Light on the Page.

Walls

And I am lost unless I give my being

as a path to those who must walk this way;

my humanity an empty nothing

unless it leads up to that simple door.

There is no entrance except I open it;

I am the light inside, the humble straw.

And I will be the sheltering stable walls

whose wood and stone remain throughout all time.

Road

No largesse do I have to offer,

no gift of plenty; accommodation;

room and board. But I have in my head

a cave, in my heart a stable.

These are yours. Your pains

are overdue; I have nothing

but what I am – too little

while the road cuts your feet and the night

deepens. But if you will have me

I will be the straw beneath your back,

and the light will go on down

a curving, winding road

far, far, far into the future.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Picture: Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst

The uncompromising need for humanity – that is the theme that the final week before Christmas sets before us. We want to be loved and understood; we want someone to take our hand and lead us through the dark, unpredictable world history has bequeathed us. Why me? Why now? Why should I go through this? I’m just a traveller in time who has landed here – I have no special gift to bring; I can’t heal the world.

What a strange thing to be a time traveller. That’s what we are. We set the dial, spun the wheels and arrived here. In the whole history of time we are just people who chanced – or chose – to be here. And the world is cruel, untidy, pitiless. Alas! Who is going to sort it out for us? Jesus Christ?

I’m parodying the mindset of the world today. Yes, truly people are suffering and caught in the cogs of time. But the cogs are human created and can be human solved. Why should we call out for a supernatural being to come to our aid and take all our sufferings on his shoulders? Be careful what you wish for – the supernatural being may not be the one you think he is.

Whose humanity is called for? Someone else’s? A divine being’s? Every tear that falls becomes a torrent in front of you; every unkindness a cutting forest; cold thoughts are a moonless night; a lack of charity is a winter without cheer. Not one more step can I take on my own path unless I dry the tear, awaken kindness, warm the thoughts. The torrent will turn back in itself, the forest open, the bright moon shine its light ahead. What chance do I have then of continuing? The chance that saves the world, that lets me out here at this point in history. The path is not for me alone – it is for any holy family which chances to be coming this way.

Face

But all I have left in me is a heart,

as mind and limbs are chafed away by time;

yet stars flow in and lift it, till apart

from world it rises to its higher clime.

Not there alone but sheltered in the grace

which lived before the world was made a thought;

so coming down again I see the face

who smiles on the heart I saved and brought.

Torrent

A tear becomes a torrent in front of me;

an unkindness a cutting forest;

cold thoughts a moonless night;

no charity, a winter without cheer.

What use is faith except to scatter clouds?

What worth have words unless they clear the thorns?

Not one more step can I take for myself

unless my path is fit for the holy

family who might chance to come this way.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. 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 improbable thing about instincts, in a self-conscious world, is that they have a life of their own. This is one of the basic conundrums of existence. Why was the world made this way, that while consciousness and self-knowledge want to grow, evolve and ascend, our instincts remain zoological? It’s as if we have the whole herd of animal life tucked inside our individual human forms. How can we hope to change when we always want to eat the leaves of the highest trees or wallow in the deepest muddy swamp? What use are high-flown sentiments when the tongue will flash out and wrap itself round the nearest passing fly? Animals are surely one of the greatest pleasures in life, but the bestiary within is a different proposition.

I propose that at one time of year the instincts behave differently: they become anointed with light. This is portrayed in all those wonderful paintings which show the ox and ass – and maybe other animals – in attendance at the Nativity. The human heart melts and feelings pour into that place. Everything that was purely bodily is tinged for a while with the light of heaven. The heart melts – this is the clue to the animal kingdom overcoming itself in a self-conscious world, and the key to this basic conundrum of existence. The instincts are placed, by right, beside the crib. And, without a doubt, heaven shines down and loves the animals too.

This rarefied light is something we can only experience for a short time and then must come away again. We must go back to our fields and our houses and wrestle once more with the recalcitrance of the instincts. We can marvel again at the giraffes, the hippopotami and the long-tongued toads who live among us – perhaps within us. But something has changed: the human heart has become attuned to the sound of angel voices and nothing can completely change it back again. This divine-angelic being is within us as surely as the beasts of the field or the birds of the air. No amount of asceticism and mortification can turn us into saints without the presence, for a few short minutes in the longest night of the year, of that angelic child.

Compass

Now instinct loses its well-trodden path,

while sun and moon are flung in disarray.

I must rise up and journey to the compass

cross – the place where no directions start or end.

I’ll look there for a nothing which is all,

a heart which starts to beat and holds all time.

I’ll find there what my instincts understand:

the home, its firelight, the first call of love.

Divine

Sometimes I’d journey to a bleary mountain-top,

where fog and sunlight smudge the highest crown;

at other times I’d walk in mists in thought

and be myself a cloud within the sky.

But always I’d come back like light at dawn

to the open-hearted cave which hides in time;

as mist will clear and fog dispel, my steps

will know their way untold to life divine.

Stare

And from my mountain-top the sky seems creased

by life’s own misty efforts to ascend;

yet what is highest makes itself the least

and stoops where others would not care to bend.

I see the cosmos shine inside a cave

and smile with the angels crowding there,

as in my infancy I used to crave

the mountains in a single misty stare.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Picture: Rembrandt, The Adoration of The Shepherds

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.

Christian mysticism is a deep feeling for the living truth as it appears in its icons. It longs for that truth to be at the heart of human life. Christian mystics experience that truth as immediate personal experience. The same holds true for the mysticism of other faiths. Mystic Christianity was practised by figures such as John of the Cross and other famous Christian mystics. Mystic theology must always be defined by that deep inner experience. The following short reflection is an experience of standing before the Holy Mother: an essential icon of Christianity – including Christian mysticism – but also a figure, in various guises, of different beliefs.

*     *     *     *     *

I was standing in the Lourdes Grotto in deep Autumn. Leaves were cascading down like snow, their faces flashing – no longer underside and overside but single bodies falling to the earth. My prayers were doing their best to stay aloft, aided by the Holy Mother’s hands, where she strayed from her statuary to be Keeper of the Unfallen. The best part of myself sent out those prayers.

And people too have let their wishes fall like leaves because they will not stray from their stony hands or listen to what is trying to stay aloft. But we are the living and our feet must be muddied with the mulch of fallen leaves until the overside appears again. The Holy Mother hears them all and comes back time and again for her Child.

My prayer is that people may be present in their words and in their gaze so that others may not be misled. My prayer is for those whose hands and eyes are as stone, that they may feel the brushing of the leaves as they fall and learn to look out of the earth. My prayer is that people may know unfallen nature in their limbs and in their seeing. Holy Mother, hear my prayer.

Dream or Nightmare

My life on earth can be dream or nightmare.

Around every corner I see a part of world

made light or dark by what a person does.

If I walked with the feet of the dead

and felt with their hands, I’d pass

the dark and sit before the light

until nightmare dissolved. But in life

I must turn a corner every time I act.

Leaves

Standing at the shrine in autumn;

leaves cascade like snow

before the Holy Mother. Prayers

take stock of themselves, turning

first one face then the other

to the God who tolerates changes.

I am peaceful in this place of tears

and long-unanswered hopes. Leaves

will turn and turn many times

before they touch the silent ground.

Fate

Ah! The prayer that lightly skims across the ground

rises again and melts into the sky. Leaves

dismember. The best part of myself

is sent in prayer and cannot seal

the fate of dying things in earth.

How many leaves must fall, how many prayers

avert their fate before a man becomes

answer to himself, the best part of earth?

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© landar 2011. All rights reserved

Christian Mysticism – The Holy Mother