Upload
roger-russell
View
221
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
1/31
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
2/31
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.Ulysses.
Foreword
My father once told me that the spirit is the loneliestentity in existence. It has no contact with what goes on around it
except through very inadequate channels of interpretation. It is
true; Life is so rich in every possible way and yet we can never
truly become part of it in what we know to be this incarnation.
What we do know and see is often too much for us so we let it go
by. But sometimes, when we can, we absorb some of our environment
and return it with a little of ourselves in order that our lives
might have some meaning. I, in my pride and power, have attempted
to do this but it is so much coloured by me that there is possibly
very little of value for others. I hope that this is not the case.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
3/31
For Belind who suddenly made it all seem worth it!
THE GIFT
Amidst the confusion and learning of this beginning I offer you aplace in my heart that is yours, always yours.
Yours in every sense of the word.
A place furnished by you, walled in and painted by you.
A forever place.
No matter that I marry, lose, love or hate anyone, anywhere,
No matter that I cross oceans and never return or eventually die
to take this place with me beyond the stars.
It will always be available to you; No debt, no rent,
Only the hope that you will, from time to time, visit this place,Open the windows wide to let your breath freshen the air,
Your spirit brighten the rooms.
But it will be your place, your breath, your spirit and your
brightness.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
4/31
WARA hangover from that in the past that was dark and dangerous yet
better regulated than now when we are supposedly free to make
rational decisions.
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" refers not to the men
that are sent in to do battle, but rather to the raging
opportunities that offer the savagery in a man's breast a chance
to override his gentler half.
We are children of our history and must deal with the violence
that is in us not entertain it. It is a terrible responsibility
for the leader of a nation to command the hope and sunshine of our
future into a situation where the resolution of problems lies in
the barrel of a gun or at the end of a whip. Where decisions are
based on fury or hate rather than consideration or brotherhood.
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
I think that you had better hurry, we are going to be late.
What sort of pictures are they?
Well they are in fact a collection of sorts; they portray the
emotions of war.
Oils?
No! Words actually
Woman at an Embassy
A girl comes out of an embassy door. What an imposing building, it
is very high and has been built of grey stone. It is quietly
dignified, just as it should be. Down the street there are a lot
of people making a lot of noise. They seem to be very cross about
something or other.
The girl is happy. She is dressed in a light brown skirt and a
white blouse. She stops at the top of the stairs leading down to
the street and turns to look back into the building. She laughsand the whole world enjoys the sound. The grey stone seems
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
5/31
brighter and stronger because of her and the air gladly carries
her pleasure to all that listen.
Never, ever, ever! she shouts to someone we cannot see.
It is satisfying to look at her; she has blue veins at the base ofher neck, which you can only see because the skin is so delicate
there. Further up, as the skin follows the line of her jaw, it
thickens slightly, giving itself more texture. It is a very nice
color indeed. Given the opportunity you would like to reach out
with your finger and let the tip of it run down the slow curve
from her ear to her chin.
Her eyes would sparkle. You know in your heart that she would
smile at you and then take your hand away because she is just a
girl and adoration is a mystery she still shies from.
It must be about ten-o-clock because the sun is behind the
buildings and the air has a morning freshness. All is clear light.
At the other end of the street, away from the crowd, there are a
few people. Ordinary people; shopping bags, hats and children.
There are also some cars; a red jeep, a panel van, a sedan. The
crowd has come closer and there are two large trucks moving
towards them.
The dignified grey building is right in the middle. The color
suddenly fades from the girls eyes as her back grows red flowers.
Everyone is running towards the steps. Everyone is shouting. Somepeople have guns in their hands.
Life is snapped away and the noise leaps into the air. Far above
the City it cries, Freedom!
The pain as it rends peace from its shell tears at all involved. A
lot of the crowd is entering the building, which remains
dignified. The grey stone makes the dark pools of blood
surrounding the girl seem stronger and brighter. The air only
motions towards her. The emptiness in her, you must listen for
yourself.
INSIDE JOHNNY DANIELS
Wham Bam, going to get you if I can The lungs, the voice box
work hard to let sounds out to tell the world that inside here it
is good. In here there is power.
Deep inside Johnny, we change from one thing to another as Johnny
directs us. When someone close to Johnny died a little while agoit got very thick in here. It was crowded; there was no room to
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
6/31
move. Dark things swelled and pulsed and tried to break out into
the air. For a little while some things escaped and we shook and
rattled while great sobbing chunks jumped away never to be seen
again. But not all; Johnny was very strong and he pressed down and
stomped and squashed and nailed down lids. Now there is a lot of
that stuff down there beneath us. It makes the floor hard.
But that was yesterday and yesterday is so easily put aside.
Today Johnny flies a plane and when Johnny flies he is happy and
it is good in here. So we sing and we spread lightness that lifts
him and makes him feel like bursting.
Johnnys eyes send us a message, it runs like fire through us all
and you can feel the fine tension. Down below the darkness stirs
and we are afraid. There is much living to be had in moments like
these; it is as if we hang on a rotten string, will it hold out orwont it?
We are in Johnny, he rules. He takes us where he will. We are
Johnny, ready to drop out of the sky and fire, ready to kill.
But wait! It seems that there is no danger and we relax a little.
It comes to us from Johnny that what he sees are not warriors but
people. Peaceful people going about their peaceful business. The
floor shifts a little, there is some protest from the dark parts.
It is lucky that Johnny has control of the past. Johnny has the
keys to the floor. It is strange that he reaches down into himselfand unlocks it. Why is he doing this? The blackness pushes and
surges up, it is wild and fills our space with anger. Inside here
it is suddenly thick again. I can see the voice box and lungs
betraying us all. They strain against the very roof of Johnny,
shouting their rage. It is impossible to fight the blackness; it
takes us all by the throat.
Kill, Kill, Kill. We all throb inside Johnny. As the plane banks
we tighten up inside. It is different from yesterday; yesterday
the darkness was slowly painful. Today it is quick, sharp and
strong.
Johnny goes, we all go, out of the sky we come
Kill, Kill, Kill.
CHILD IN A FIELD
The water has a still grey look to it. It seems endless and is
only disturbed as the couple bend, moving forwards one step at atime. He and she work in perfect rhythm doing what they and their
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
7/31
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
8/31
He could not have done it, he said, it was not in him to do it,
not even for her.
The room darkened around them and the curtains in the window hung
motionless. Beside them a coffee table stood with a vase and fresh
flowers of the morning.
There was no understanding of it in them. There is no
understanding of it in any of us.
On the death of an innocent bystander at the American Embassy in Saigon.
Warriors that fight for causes cannot be treated with; when they
are defeated they must be removed completely. If not, they just
gather together whatever they have left and start all over again.
This is as true in the arena of the heart as it is of revolution!
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
9/31
DEATH
The loss of us in someone else, nothing more, nothing less.
It is possible that life is a strong, strange river, seething
through the universe. A mass of boiling colour and unpredictable
turbulence. Temperatures and intensities rise and fall, strike and
recede in a welter of emotion and desire with a rhythm that we
sense but cannot see, hope for but cannot predict. Some shout, I
understand! or I see! and swim strongly in one direction or the
other. Of these some are borne up, others toil continually, whilst
the rest sink sooner or later.
All of us must be swept out of sight at some stage. We believe
therefore that we become part of the river to pour forever through
a world of which we know nothing. It is quite possible however
that all that joins the journey is the rotting flesh of our
bodies. Our egos become no more than bubbles of emptiness briefly
rising to disappear from the surface.
I heard an old man, healthy and strong but with only a few years
left to him, talk of his wife of fifty years who was dying in a
hospital nearby. Behind his words, describing his love and his
life, a whisper of what was waiting for him when she had gone
reached out across the room and touched us all.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to build and create our life around
another person outside ourselves. The death of such a person
proves beyond doubt just how much we need their continued
presence. When they are taken from us we stand amidst the rubble
of walls that were once our stronghold and we are defenceless.
The old man has little left to him that seems worthwhile, the cold
wind blows through the gaping holes and he has no desire to
rebuild and call in new partners. His cloak is slipping from his
shoulders and he will perhaps quietly wait for night to fall andcatch him without shelter.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
10/31
Life is so constant and secure.
Death is not the opposite of life nor the end of it, it is just a
very small part of its security.
Nothing ends, it only changes. A leaf is not a tree nor is a
person life. From alongside the river we can appreciate that the
peace and beauty of our surroundings is the creation and
assimilation of different aspects of life. We fear the loss of
awareness and perhaps this fear arises from a lack of the very
awareness we really need; An understanding that other forms of
being have their own knowledge, their own self and their owncontract with the environment in which they exist.
It is you and I that fear death.
Life cannot fear death. Death is to life what breathing is to us;
part of an endless cycle that pumps existence around the body of
creation.
I look across the valley and see endless mustard coloured grass
and life; Life in trees, in horizons and in rocks. My heart fills
with a great joy and for a moment I grasp the beauty of creation
and the security of its perfect logic.
She has become a part of all this; part of the past and of the
eternal future and I am trapped in the present. I can never touch
with what I am, what she has become. I can only catch glimpses and
perhaps feel the feather like touch of God's love, which now
includes her own. This love desires from me, for me, that Isomehow pursue both the joy and pain in creation. That I try each
day to partake in and absorb the wonder and excess of giving that
exists everywhere we care to look. In this way I can become a
source myself and radiate the greatness of it all, contributing to
its inevitable success over all that is dark and lost.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
11/31
LIFE
All that is; laughter, tears and truth so real we never seem tosee beyond the surface of it.
Relying on life is like trusting the Gods; the wind or a passing
grasshopper can change everything.
I have a place to go to when I am unhappy or my heart tells methat it has no hope any longer. This place is high and the edge
falls away into the countryside below.
Sometimes when I sit on the edge and look down, the birds fly past
beneath me. Not far beneath me, but just there beneath me, a few
feet away. The swallows are beautiful and although small, stretch
their wings so far out that they seem to cover the sky itself.
When they know that I am there they get curious and turning they
shoot up and around, falling back down to slip over my head in
wonder. The crows are not so graceful, they are also not so
impressed; they fly slowly around me watching carefully. Sometimesthey get verbal and cry out, asking who I am. But they all fly.
They all ride the sky, translating what is invisible into grace
and glory.
When I am there I like to toss stones into the air and catch them
before they drop into the nothing at my feet. These stones ride my
power; they take the energy of my arm and sail up, up and up.
Sadly it does not last long. In an instant the earth calls out to
them and they listen to come rushing back to where they think it
is safe. Of course they are just stones and will never know that
the power they have comes from my insignificance and that thesafety is just an illusion. Sooner or later I always miss and they
drop past me to the ground far below. Their high mountain seat
lost to the whim of a troubled mind.
The stones are not aware and feel nothing, the birds must surely
know something, but I, I take from both of them understanding and
strength that makes me a comparative god, so far beyond them that
even if I knew it all I would not want any of it.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
12/31
It is great to be at the top of the mountain, but I never saw a
mountain worth a damn that you cannot fall off.
Life was never promised or given as an unbalanced event. It has
always been and always will be a fair mix of joy and despair,laughter and grief. Life is not balanced by having some good
things and then some bad, it is balanced at any point in time. It
is balanced in each event that we experience.
There are no free rides and anyone who believes that such a
concept is the right of every individual is mistaken. What is our
right and has always been so is the right to view life as we
choose to, to take from it what we will.
We cannot and should not refuse or resist any of the experiences
that come our way, but use our energy to work through all,laughing when we can, crying when we must but always with the
knowledge that everything that remains with us is what we have
freely selected.
Some people say they need a friend, what they want they really
want is a field on which they can demonstrate their unassailable
skill as players. To offer yourself as that field is a great
sacrifice but a destructive one.
Every mistake that you make is an opportunity to rebuild, to see
something exposed that was previously hidden and can now be
assessed and learnt from
If you cannot see yourself as other people see you, the most
compelling force that you possess is without direction.
There are great things to be done and they wait patiently for
someone who can pick himself up out of the clinging ordinariness
of all that is around him.
The best provider of a good reason is self-interest, with it you
can fool not only the others but also yourself.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
13/31
I want more! is probably the single biggest cause of ending up
with less. There is value in pushing the limits but none
whatsoever in going beyond them.
We envy people that show great courage and achieve the impossible,
so why do we run from any opportunity sent our way that allows us
to do the same.
Uncompleted tasks flit through the caverns of ones mind like
frightened bats, they must be dealt with and allowed to fade into
the dark corners or taken by the throat and cast down to the floor
where they can be forgotten. Left alone, they clutter the air anddistract you with seemingly random flights across your purpose.
Now and again I glimpse the edge of a strong philosophy for life
that makes understandable the pain and the loss, the joy and the
laughter that strikes us in a manner that seems to have no pattern
or purpose.
The idea that we pay for joy with grief or for laughter with
hurting is abhorrent to me and I have no time to explore it. Sometimes we do live in the darker half of life and despair of ever
walking out into the light. Sometimes we are in the brightest of
sunshine and cannot believe that the dark can ever surround us.
But this has nothing to do with a logical issue of circumstance.
I believe that there is no chaos in Nature so somewhere, sometime
a balance will be struck. We have to accept that this balance is
not there to injure or pleasure the individual. It works rather
towards a greater good, a larger purpose than you or I. As
individuals we wish that it was not so, but as individuals we
contribute very little to the magic of life, except perhaps withinour small and very brief spheres of influence.
If we could just stand far enough away from our desperate
involvement with the immediate, we would perhaps see enough of
where it is all going to say, Now! Now that I can see I give and
take it all; pleasure or pain without reserve.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
14/31
I believe that God has a poor opinion of anybody who thinks it is
OK to die. We were not created to be objects of pity or easily
submit to fate. Our mission, whatever it might be, should be
accomplished with delight in the vehicle we have been given to
pursue it life!
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends. JOHN, 15:13.
To offer your death for a friend, perhaps short and quick or slow
and painful, but always romantic and sometimes glorious, is one
thing. To offer your life is another.
A person who is prepared to surrender the rest of his expectedyears to some or other service for the good of another gives more
than just a moment of nobility.
Conceit is not a pleasant trait, but when you go into battle it
does not help your cause to step forward believing that you are an
idiot.
To stand back and let life meander along for a while makes no
sense in a modern world, but life does it anyway, regardless of
how much we reason with it.
There is a link between the natural timing of the universe and the
occurrence of events. We would often like to interfere with this
and have things happen when they suit us. When we do this we lose
much of the harmony of our lives.
Why is it that the spirit has so much control over us? When the
heart soars and everything appears golden, then the physical
becomes all powerful and life is taken and moulded as you desire.
If the heart is empty and lies open and raw then any little
difficulty becomes a brick wall shutting out hope. All the
challenges become problems and they tramp across the spirit
beating it further into the mire.
Life is not vindictive but masochistic; if you want to excite ityou must grip it by the throat and shake it around a little.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
15/31
Still a child
I am a child of the sun and the sky,
A child of the grass and flowers,
of bark and bees,
leaves and dappled rays of light.
I am a child of the radiance of God
And of the darkness of the devil.
I am a child of hate, of love, of joy and grief.
I am a part of all these things,
They have in them the birth of me.
I have in me the essence of them all and more;I have been borne and moulded of cement,
Of paint, nails and corrugated iron.
I am glass and houses, dusty roads and tar.
I am cars, pavements, lifts and trains and planes.
I am something of all the people I have ever met.
All this and years have made me old,
And I have wisdom.
Wisdom beyond the years I have been given,
Because I know that I am, even now, still a child.
The moral issues of life must have a rulebook that fits, that is
applicable, regardless of cultural or religious background. The
way we see the rules, emphasise them or ignore them is so much
governed by what is convenient.
A passage in the New Testament says that although we see dimly
now, one day all will be clear. How will we stand in the clarity
of that vision? In that light, what darkness will be revealed?
We can only hope that there is love enough to accept where we bent
the rules to justify selfishness we were not even aware of. Love
enough to allow an imperfect offering into a perfect picture. To
love is divine, to err is human; but the measure is safe if the
divine is enough to balance the humanity.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
16/31
THE GODS
Even the One God is at least two that I know of.
Sometimes the dark creeps up on me and slowly invades my soul. I
wonder what has happened to God and why it is that his presence is
sometimes so, well just so missing.
Would it be too easy for us if it were otherwise? Perhaps we are
not here to fall down and weep every time things go wrong. Perhaps
the more we fight back and stand taller than our troubles, the
easier it is to see him.
We are greater than problems, our hearts higher than fences.
Not even in the darkest moments of my life, when grief or
frustration has smothered every hope of light, when hurt, sharp as
a razor, has slashed and gauged at the real me, the only me thatmatters, have I humbled myself before God. I refuse to do so; it
is a thing born in small minds and has no hope of life in my
concept of love. God and I like each other a lot but we often do
not agree.
God, I guess I will never understand you but I was hoping that you
would understand me. You can break me if you wish, it just seems
such a waste from where I sit.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
17/31
RHYTHM
What have we, A dewdrop that for a moment shone in a slender
stream of never to be forgotten sunlight?
Or an evening stillness deep and filled with fire,
that quickly fades and with the twilight is soon gone?Would it not be more glorious to keep forever bright that which
the gods themselves have cause to desire?
But it is they that have decreed there will be no joy or peace
anywhere that does not flare and die to the rhythm of the
universe.
To allow events to proceed unhindered by your needs is to place
your life in the hands of the Gods; it requires a belief in theirregard for you that is almost incredulous
We in our deprived sense of God liken him to us, but he is much
more, so much everything, that for the present it is perhaps best
that we name him and classify him. For the truth is so vast and so
far beyond our understanding that we would surely deny it could
ever be.
Dear God
Dear God,
Jerry came to me today and said that I should think about
calling on you to save me. He said you could heal me of this
thing. I think he is right, you can cant you?
If I call you Saviour and if I give my life to you, then Jerry can
lay hands on me and he says that if I believe I will be healed.
I thought that you and I were already friends of a sort. I always
seem to run to you if things get really bad. When they are not too
awkward, well you know where I am if you need something; at least
I believe that you do.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
18/31
I do not think that I can do what Jerry suggests and I will tell
you why:
I have in a small way tried to maintain a standard of behaviour
and level of dignity in this rather strange life you have given
us. I think that it is right to do so because if I am your
creation we do not need the devil holding me up as one of yourfailures. Anyway I do not think that we do.
If I bow my knee and give my life to you now that I have cancer,
because I have cancer, it seems just a little false. I have in
fact strongly criticised this sort of thing in other people and
questioned their motives.
I cannot deny that such a step on my part would do a lot to help.
It would give me some fellowship down here and because I trust
you, a great deal of hope. But, and here is the big but, it would
also mean a betrayal of my own glibly given opinions. You knowthat I have often stood talking to friends with a glass of wine in
my hand or used my pompous and unassailable position of fatherhood
to expound many theories of honour and integrity. What would I be
worth if I fled for succour to the charisma of repentance and
commitment as soon as something went wrong.
So you see, if I am to die then I must do it by the same standards
that I have professed to support when it was easy to do so. I
really would like to die a man of honour, even if it is only in a
small way. Honour is a hard mistress; pretty good at providing
lofty ideals such as the armour of righteousness and things likethat, but decidedly rejecting those who fail to stand by their
commitments when the trumpets sound and the battle starts. She
does not do this with fury, but with pity and disgust. Fury I can
deal with; Pity, disgust these are not so nice.
I have often said, You must be proud of what you are and faithful
to your beliefs to have any hope of satisfaction at the end of
your life.
That is not the only thing I have been arrogant about but it makes
the point. So you see I am a little bit stuck here. Caught as itwere, by my own big mouth.
I hope you can understand all this because I think that if I want
to die this way I am really going to need your help. Just between
you and me I am relying on my belief that to do this with some
integrity is in fact serving you anyway. I am going to have to
tell Jerry that if I get over this cancer, then I will consider
letting him save me. For the moment I think that you and I will
just have to try and work it out on our own.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
19/31
I heard God in the rain last night; I awoke sometime when all the
others were long tucked deep in their brief hibernation. Through
the warm haze of just lost sleep, I heard God in the rain, outside
the window. He said nothing. He just let me know that He was
there. It is strange that He is at times such a private person but
it is O.K. that He just is.
When the Gods smile at you and the light of their laughter fills
your soul with joy, take it and play the game with your entire
heart, their gifts carry no limits except your own.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
20/31
LOVE SACRIFICED
There is no logic to love which is never given reasonably but
often without limit and to bottomless pits that take and return
nothing, not even acknowledgement.
We make many mistakes in this life and squander all sorts of
possessions. They can be replaced. Deep caring, friendship and
above all love are too precious to play with. We must open
ourselves to them wholeheartedly, because wisely is not a quality
we should associate with love. Love cannot grow or flourish if it
is not given. The world is desperately short of this greatest of
all gifts. However hard it may seem, however wrong it might appear
to be, Love is for sharing.
In the midst of a crowd I am alone and I want it to stay that way,
yet I want so much from other people.
When I needed desperately to be loved there was no love. In my
self-pity at the time I was blinded to the needs of everyone else.
If I had been able to give, I might have been able to receive. But
I was not and did not.
There is no meeting place for myself and these people around me. I
am lost in a world they can never enter and they, they are part of
a world I am frightened to rejoin.
Once there was a meeting place for us, it was a field in which we
had laughed, played and cried. When it clouded over we stepped
outside and closed the gates. Far away on the other side of
opposite fences we stood and looked back at what we had once
possessed. It was empty, shrouded in mist, almost as if it had
never been.
We will never be able to step back inside that field, but we can
walk around it and perhaps when we do we will be able to see thatwhat we had enjoyed was not so much the grass and the sunshine as
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
21/31
each other. Now you are no more and this is the joy that I am
without. I look around and see the people about me, but you are
not there. Will there ever be someone else that can share new
fields with me?
I am filled with an indescribable sadness today. If you hope
greatly, disappointment of the smallest kind can become
devastating. It cuts deeply into the tissues of the soul and one
fears for that in you which is perhaps the essence of your life;
the very ability to hope that you value above all else in the
first place. No hope for some might mean despair, for me it is
death. The emotional level of life must be high for life to be
worthwhile but one pays for this with bitter tears. I, in the face
of failure, am always able to pick myself up and continue with my
hope flying high where it catches the strongest winds, the
brightest sunshine. I do not know how long I will be able to dothis, I grow old and my banner becomes increasingly harder to
raise.
He sat alone in the house. She was not there but in another town,
a town where she had friends and support. He had told her to go.
She needed to be away because of what they were doing to her. From
the beginning he had known that he would pay with bitter tears for
his involvement. But like all lovers, in the glory of being
needed, he had thought it would be worth it. He had not faced whathe knew of himself because he wanted what she meant to him and
tomorrow is always tomorrow.
But now it was today and he was alone. What he could do for her
was nearly finished and in his mind so was he. His fear of being
alone for the years to come and the loss of perhaps the most truly
real person he had ever met cut too deep for reason. Emotion and
its bitter winds tore through his heart.
Beside him, on the coffee table stood a telephone. It was not
connected, it was just there, part of things waiting to be packedfor the final departure. A departure from the people and the
situation that had so hurt her. People that had given him a role
to play for which he would be paying long after they had forgotten
that they had ever been malicious or unkind towards anyone. She
too had known how he felt and if they had shared anything it was a
deliberate ignorance of how destructive these feelings would
become. There was nothing in his heart that could deal with the
sense of loss and futility that had breached every defense he had.
He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
22/31
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
23/31
NEW LOVE
A power that overrules everything you ever feared, intelligence,
weakness and reality, in short, The greatest gift of all!
I live - I love - I have feelings that swell my heart beyond the
confines of my body. I must love, I must touch, I must be loved.
I want someone to snuggle up to me at night as if I was the safest
place in the world. I need to reach out my hand and let my fingers
slide down a perfect cheek. I need to drive my body to the limit
to transport my lover to the ultimate abandoning of all for me and
what I am doing.
I need to have someone I trust with my whole being, in my life and
in my heart.
That love will never have the new sun sparkle across it as did the
first, but it will be deep and perhaps it's evening twilight will
have its own joy, rooted in all the knowledge of what has gone
before.
You occupy so much of my thoughts. The fact is that you are one of
Gods special creatures something magnificent, but proud and
wary, like an eagle or a Lynx. Now I step into my garden and find
you there, a gift. Momentary perhaps but so very real If I reach
out to try and possess you, will you turn and escape into a
wilderness that I cannot enter, lost to me forever. Brave words
cannot put courage where the price has been paid so often that its
reality is a part of life. Perhaps if the Gods do not care that
much for me they care for you and will guide you to something that
will spill over onto my plate without shattering it. I have loved
and lost so much, my need is so great and the plate so fragile.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
24/31
When we know the devastation of losing that which we have loved
without reserve, then to stand on the edge of new love and step
again onto that highway is truly an act of courage few can make.
You cannot know where it will lead you or how long you will
travel. It is true that you understand the great joy of sharing
but you also know just how easily the darkness can close in.
Paint me a picture. Fill the skies with rain and thunderous
clouds, the corners with darkness and draw pain and grief in every
shadow. Then put yourself in it; as small as you like, far to one
side or big and right in the middle. But paint yourself in full
colour, as bright as I have learned you to be and I will take this
picture with joy and hang it on every wall in my house.
Mine
I look to the horizon and see the glow of dawn rising unstoppable
from the earth.
You are my new day, strong and beautiful; lifting my soul to the
heaven God wants it to know.
You are in me, around me and everywhere I touch,
Yet I am told that you are not mine.
They say you are like the night sky; impossible to own.
You laugh, talk and cry with people I do not know,
You wake up in a bed I do not sleep in, share your meals with
someone who is not me.
They do not know that you were born inside my soul before I walked
the earth,
You were a part of me before I was myself.
They do not know that without you I am empty;
Less than a cloud without rain or a tree without leaves.
It is true that I am trapped inside my life and watch you through
the window.
They see me there and think that it is my house.
I do not live there,
I live with you and we soar like eagles,
Flowers bloom around us, the dew sparkles across the green of our
lives like diamonds.
Knowing this, I feed my hungry soul.
God made you to fulfil me;
He shaped your mind and fired the light in your eyes.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
25/31
As I dreamed you would be a thousand times, so are you ten
thousand times.
You are the sun that casts this shadow sharp and bright against
the wall,
You define my life.I know you revolve for me but not around me.
I am always with you, I am content.
I love life when it gets going like this. I do not care what I
have to pay; I must take the reins and ride. When the horse dies
beneath me I will look around and see how far I must go to get
back, if I ever want to!
Love rampages through the fields of my life like an army of
marauding Mongols; taking what it will and laying waste every puny
defence I throw up. It must never stop; I do not want the country
to lie fallow ever again. Neither do I want the thorns and wild
grasses of self-pity and apathy to be seen anywhere near the
creations of my heart.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
26/31
IN SEARCH OF REASONSWhy is a thing of the past and as such is not worthy of
consideration. But it is such an integral part of us it cannot be
ignored.
Quest
I walk these unhappy roads with hunger the basis of thought,What town or city lies before me does not matter.
All that matters is the effort that I make to reach it,
As if by this the sustenance I seek for my soul can be bought.
Before my feet, dusty tar and gravel stretch across the ground,
To endless horizons of cloudless skies and merciless suns,
Lonely nights filled with sounds of which I am not part.
Can it be that the very way I am is that which keeps me bound
To senseless travel and constant pursuit of my other half?
Troubles fill all the vistas around me, below me, above me.
There are no more pledges of happiness, they have been recalled.The universe has no one in it except me and I cannot live alone,
So must I wander, seeking that which will somehow make me, we.
Around my feet sounds of footsteps spring rhythmically upwards,
Quietly announcing that I walk on in hope of friendship.
Cars that pass know that I am there but pass just the same,
Drivers and passengers unwilling to stop or speed me forwards,
Not knowing that to do so would open life to me again.
What I need to make my life more than desperate existence,
Cannot be measured or pictured in any sensible form,
It is shrouded in haze, hanging above a shimmering desert.Not real, only a memory, a thought without flesh or substance.
Once in a distant past there was a magic holding me in its light,
A creature of love, created for me and made part of my life,
So that life was never to be one, but always two, always shared.
This was the way it had to be, justified because it was right.
There was no other possibility, it was, as we were, invincible.
I look all around and see that this is still true for many.
Sharing, touching, secret smiles and strong arms reach out wide,
Encompassing the togetherness of each other, quietly confident.
For each, the other, everything the soul needs, for me not any;Not from my memories or even from the people that pass me by,
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
27/31
Is there no possibility that I might share another soul?
Can a light not rise on my horizon one soft morning and call to
me;
Saying peace to you, life will be whole again before you die,
Someone waits over the next rise, someone who needs as you do.
Perhaps this is also not to be, perhaps my faith must be tested,
I am not to be driven by promises but by what has gone before.
The road is empty and the edges strewn with stones, barren,
Nights desolate, only the morning has hope, after I have rested.
Oh, that I might see beside me the form of my own desires walking,
Then will I know that I am not forgotten, not lost or cast aside.
Only when someones love for me touches my soul in concern,
When in their mind and inside mine I hear our souls talking,
Will I believe that at last the end of the journey has come.
There are times in life when the horizon is painted black and the
air is full of menace. Hope is far off and has little substance.
Bow your head before the power that is there, it is greater than
you, but do not kneel. Hang onto whatever pride you have and walk
into it. It has no interest in your destruction and will pass on
to whatever destiny it recognises as its own. If you are destroyed
it will be through your own power.
Flowers reach a peak of glory and then sadly spoil, eventually
dropping their petals to the ground bruised and withered. They die
and with the coming seasons do it all over again. So does our
innocence bruise and fall. We, however, replace it with cynicism,
ambition and cunning. The older and the more sophisticated the
world gets, the earlier in our lives this happens. If only we
could say NO! If only we could retain our simple trust and faith
to the grave.
I would like to know, What is the lesson that we must learn that
is worth the destruction of such value?
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
28/31
HOPE
The old stalwart of the lost and lonely who kid themselves that as
long as there is hope there is life. The truth is that hope is not
a quality of the future but a crutch for the present.
A NEW DAY
When Adam and Eve slipped and lost the reality of heaven,
They kept the breath of it.
The Lord left them the flowers of the field,
And the sun in the sky above.
Everywhere that we their children look there is a promise;
It floats on white clouds in a blue sky.
It sparkles in drops of rain on the petals of a flower.
It cries out from the lungs of a newborn infant.
It is the shadow of a glory lost yet certain to be found.
It is so much a guarantee of things to come,
That even the turning of the world calls out to us;
As the day was and at midnight is no longer,
So sure is it that the night will pass and the sun return.
I have inside of myself steel, There is a core that exists
somewhere at the end of the line that is impervious and stands,
unassailable, to preserve the essential me. This only becomes
evident when the flesh has been stripped from its bones and the
front lines of my array have been devastated by the hunger of the
outer world. No matter what happens, my strength and commitment to
life can be spent without reserve because in the end I remain.
Always standing, always capable of fighting again. But friend, I
am not unique, all of us have this, sadly we lay down our arms and
concede the battle before we expose it.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
29/31
I work, I play I live at a hundred miles an hour, but it costs a
great deal. Sometimes I look around at the devastation that is my
garden and I believe that it will never, can never grow again. But
a little sunshine, a seed here and there and what do you know; thescars are covered in flowers.
Life continues and that is what makes everything possible in the
end; No matter what happens, how bad everything can suddenly
become, it passes and life goes on. It is this inevitable progress
that is our hope. The movement of time guarantees that all
becomes the past and that the future, unknown as it is, brings
change varied enough to provide relief. We know that there will beother bad times and that we will be in trouble more than once. But
we know just as surely that there will be good times too and we
hang on.
At times the gardener turns the soil viciously that we might bear
abundantly. Such adversity is the secret of growth. The shaking of
the body has no eternal meaning, it is how we use the experience
to free a human excellence that means so much to us when we mustturn and look at what we have become. It is what allows us to be
more than we ever believed we could be. It is a chance to shout
out that we are truly greater than the physical world around us,
to show that we have within us the souls that God gave us. It is
an opportunity to prove beyond any doubt that there is more to us
than flesh and blood, that we are a creation confounding reason
and science, full of immeasurable strength and love.
I have lost and grieved bitterly, I have given of my soul and
sacrificed more than I can measure for love and friendship.
Despite all this I am better, more understanding and more ready to
give than ever before. Bring out the wine and start the music; I
will dance and laugh with more joy than most. Yet break my heart
and I will cry out with pain that comes from the very depths of my
being. The aspect of life that I am not ready to face and test
myself in does not exist. Yet I am not hard of heart. I do get
hurt, yet I have not become bitter or small-minded. I have sold myeternity and defied God for the woman I loved, and yet not denied
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
30/31
him. I still believe in the constant interaction between myself
and all the gods. In this conflict I am armed with my intellect
and stand as much chance of victory as they do. So I will love
again, I will even love as the young do, with foolishness and
without hope. I will live as I have always lived, but harder,
because of the pleasure I have had in the years gone by and that,my friend, is all the reason I need.
It is often the case in life that you work hard and push towards a
goal, really making a prolonged and concerted effort. When you
stop to take a breath nothing seems to have happened. Everything
appears much as it was. But this is not so; behind the apparent
lack of progress your efforts have accumulated and although it
seems as though those efforts will never be seen, they are there
and remain there. If you give up and turn away then you will nevertruly know what you have done. Be patient, the time will come when
all that accumulated effort is allowed to flow free for you to
see. You will be able to laugh and wave your fist at the air. You
will feel the power inside of yourself and it is not conceit or
foolishness, it is achievement.
What am I, and how much of me has been coloured by you? I cannot
measure it but something remains. You are part of the creation
that I now am. This work I retain and put forward into a new life.
I am a person touched by you and this gift no one can take from
me.
8/8/2019 Striving with the Gods
31/31
ENDEverything ends!
The price of great writing is pain, with it one buys
food for the soul and ideas are clothed in words.
What I have to give is not mine; I am but a keeper of power that
floats through the channels of my mind and sometimes takes shapethrough the imperfect gate of my heart.