A collection of poems and writings compiled for your evening meditation, as you sit, as did our ancients, in the midst of this longest night, in the mystery and trustworthiness of the heavens.
Find a room where you can sit in the dark. Read through these snippets slowly, notice what rises. Don’t overthink, just notice, allow, accept or reject without judgment, what stirs in your belly, what is yours.
1.”When night came, it did not fall, as people say it does. Beyond the bright crown of earth, the heavens were always dark. Here, on this lonely hill, tinier than the smallest suggestion of a moment, I watched the darkness rise up from the ground to meet the steady darkness overhead, as if the two worlds had been waiting for the sun to go so they could touch again”, Lauren Wolk, in Beyond the Bright Sea,
2.
They (the physicists) shook light from darkness! They coaxed something out of what we normally think of as nothing—the vacuum of space, the abyss, the void. But there is no such thing as empty space, The void is in reality a quantum sea of light, teeming with activity. The question is how to glimpse it because the particles move in and out of existence in the blink of an eye.
Our entire existence is a continuous, universe-wide bringing forth and returning once again into this all nourishing ‘abyss’, This ultimate reality is pure being, pure consciousness, where everything has its source; an ocean of pure potentiality at the basis of all existence, it does not arise as a result of some particular arrangement or form, it is always present. – In the stillness you will Know.
– notes taken from Awe-filled Wonder, by Barbara Fiand
3.
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness
which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which
belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of
our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our
own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of
God in us. . . . It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of
heaven.” (Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)
4.
The cat sits on the back of the sofa looking
out the window through the softly falling snow
at the last bit of gray light
I can’t say the sun was going down.
We haven’t seen the sun for two months
Who cares?
I am sitting in the blue chair listening to this stillness
The only sound: the occasional gurgle of tea
Coming out of the pot and into the cup
How can this be?
Such calm, such peace, such solitude
In this world of woe
-David Budbill
5.
We are too often unhappy, while on and on
the world remains the gift of presence God
meant it to be at the beginning and sustains
in every moment and when we catch
even a glimpse of this, our restlessness
begins to open to a deeper stillness within us
where we will come to know that what is
now torn apart and broken will finally come
back to the stillness which rests in the deep
oneness of this life and in the breadth of Love
A deeper stillness –Meister Eckhart, as translated by Mark Burrows and Jon Sweeney
6.
To know the dark, Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight
And find that the dark too, blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings
Now, if you will, read this before turning off the light to be dark
2020
Winter solstice poem*
The shortest day and the longest night have arrived
We turn our attention to stillness
As we enter the darkness
willingly
As we slow down and turn inward
We rest in the belly of darkness
We are held in the womb of God
We resist no more
We force no more
We are anxious no more
We fear no more
We rest
We allow
We soften
We surrender
We stop
We stop the struggle
We stop the pushing
We stop the striving
We stop the future telling
We stop to see What Is
And in doing so we surrender to the void
We arrive at the abyss
Where miracles are made
where mystery lives
Where connectivity reigns
Where creation begins
And we wait
We wait
We patiently wait….
Turn off the light now, and sit for 20 minutes in the darkness. After 20 minutes come back here to read the closing prayer
And in this quiet moment
We feel the peace in the darkness
We sense the potential in the abyss
We perceive the presence..
of light
We see its truth
We’re in awe of its beauty
We are lost in the wonder
We sense our own capacity for light
And we wait
For the light to rise
For the light to heal
For the light to guide our way
We turn our focus to hope
We turn our focus to faith
We turn our focus to Love
And in the light we see
And WE rise
To hope
To love
To create
A new year is here
The turning has already happened
May we trust
May we soften
May we Be the Light
Amen, and a little woman
– *compiled from an online source, Plentyconsulting.com
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