Sphinx

"Speak me stories I can taste and touch",

says my clever pet cat to my mind...

"Talk to me about the food. Talk to me about the feel.

Tell me how much you love me-ow."

---<--@

Due to the mostly itinerant nature of my life hitherto, most of the (pet) cats I've had the pleasure of being with are actually strays.

Hence, I do not have pictures of them but I love and remember them all nonetheless! 

My cat is a sphinx,
she likes to tell me riddles,
purring in delight.

She is quite picky
about answers, so I pay,
her with treats instead.

Then she naps,
satisfied.
---<--@



Love for Lower Creation

As Adam was asked by God
to name the creatures of the earth,
so are we who are his descendants
similarly called to possess in each ourselves
the same intensity of human ownership
for all the life of lower creation.

The human world and lower creation
are no more divided than the visible realms
are separated from the invisible ones.

We impress upon the soul of animals and plants,
the light of our understanding (how brightly or how dimly)
so that they become a reflection of our reality
and we claim their being freely as ours
by the strength of our love (how far or how fleeting)
so that they become a part of our eternity
even as we become part of God's.

- selah -

So where
do our beloved pets go
when their soul leaves the earth
and their bodies return to the ground?

They never leave.

They return to a place each in ourselves
and await the victory of all things in the LORD.

---<--@

The Loan

All knowledge is borrowed that we might obtain to the Truth
and work out in ourselves an understanding of all things.
---<--@



The mind is a cup
and with knowledge it is filled
until it is full.

It becomes useless.
Not because it is a cup.
Do you understand?

When you know,
you let go...

(...until the cup knows it is a cup.)

---<--@



Knowledge that is kept like a treasure rots,
cursing with blindness instead of blessing with sight

But knowledge that is given, in word, deed, and prayer,
instead of impoverishing the giver, multiplies the gifts.



For truth once gained is possessed forever
and understanding once obtained is forever endowed.

But all knowledge returns again and again to the LORD;
like a river, it runs; like a stream, it flows,
keeping all things, teaching all things,
bearing all things in hope.



So when you think about something, let go.

Let go, let go, and let go.

Let go until it all comes back to you by your letting go.

Then you will always have understanding.
---<--@

Seeking the Seeker

I seek the seeker;
the one who I am seeking;
the one of the One.

I am to my self
when self is empty of me -
I become my self.

Many, few.
Few, then one.
---<--@

Coming into your own sunrise -

What is
most important

is self.

Knowing this,
one knows we are many.

What is
most important to self
is true self.

Knowing this,
one knows we are one.
---<--@

Light Against Despair

I remember Night -

fallen so deep within me 

like a veil of doom.

I was the darkness

and I knew only madness

and pride, sin, and gloom.

My heart knew nothing

niether did I knew my heart -

hardly did I see!

Till I came upon 

words, muted in pages, thine!

But I heard thee not. 

How could thy beauty,

thy wonder turn to ashes!

Something wept within... 

Something wept within -
it cried out, it sought, it flew,
and never left me...

Time came, and God heard:

And so we are, you and I -

our past ceased to be.

Darkness left,

Morning came.

---<--@

A Little Personal Anecdote -

Before I knew my Anne
(and consequently, the Holocaust),
I had a very idealistic view of warfare.

I thought armed conflict in and between nations
to be a very noble, honorable, even desirable affair.

I conceived soldiery to be something
clean and neat, ordered according to the image
of an effortless, mythical glory I had only imagined
and that the innocents were always
at all times and places - mercifully spared -
in their entirety.

After my Anne
(as it is God's pleasure),
I had a very decisive turn of heart.

Though by pure necessity
I accept the imperative of an absolute defense
(i.e. defense that is undertaken for its own sake),
I now utterly abhor War of any kind existing
in and between our nations.

For
I now see War as it is,
a hideous, devouring beast;
a fallen spirit, ever alive to our plight -
the enemy of All.

And soldiery
a dirty, confusing, difficult and painful necessity
born out of the Providential will of the LORD, our God,
to see all the nations of the children of Mankind
through to the end of all these tears.

And that we are all - to a certain degree,
within and among our nations engaged
in the art of true soldiering.

As I love my Anne, I hate War.

As I love Peace, I hate War.

Today is her birthday.
---<--@