Sweet Serendipity

By Paul Davis

Sweet serendipity
Continue to shine on me
Open my eyes to see
Make me all you want me to be
Cause me to trip over my treasure
Discover my destiny
Live authentically
Practice spontaneity
Get rid of hesitancy
Live boldly
Engage the day exuberantly
Manifest my full potential passionately
Never being limited by my current reality
But living from within victoriously
Via my faith and inner reality
Sweet serendipity
When my efforts are done
And the distance I’ve fully run
Let it be said of me
In love and life I won
Take me from tragedy
To triumph
From a mess
To a deliverable message
From stumbling block
To stepping stone
From seeming setbacks
To immeasurable successes
From pain
Into power
From anxiety
Into creativity
From hurt
Into healing
From offense
Into feeling
From disaster
Into dynamic recovery
Countless destiny discoveries
Dream fulfillment
Causing all in the world
To hear it
Sweet serendipity shine on me
Make my life
What it ought to be!

Crystal Bubble

Watching, I saw
a splendiferous world
of majestic mountains
crystal streams and emerald forests
all whispering their invitation
inviting me in

Scrambling to reach out
to touch a panther lily
devour the scent of pines
and drink my fill
of a cool flowing
crystalline stream
rushing
down a eroded
waterslide carved
into ancient stone
falling to a tranquil lake
in wait

Only I tripped and
fell over my still-born
inner child lying
a congealed motionless
mass at my feet

Only movement
of the corpse
a horideous horridus
slithering within the
putrefying flesh –
a stench on the edge
of vomiting

Yet, I see everything as if
it were all put together
in one masterpiece
painted to capture that
precise entire moment for
all of history

As soon as I crawl into
that very same moment
it and I are suddenly in
two different worlds

There it is –
everything we think
everything we do already
there waiting for us
to step through

There we are
sitting inside
this crystal bubble
of now waiting
for it shatter
becoming
then and
with freedom to reach
beyond the now

In the moment
we the unruly
are incessantly
fighting for control
to posses it
as if it were
ours alone
and not
us who belong
to it

That is us
it is who we
think our selves to be
It is I,
it is you,
it is them
who think it
belongs to me

So I sit
sit and watch
as worlds
as magical and full of life
as any I have seen
explode into existence
before my eyes
and are unrolled
before my feet

I sit and bounce
about as if
there was no reality
other than this game of life
a game we create
whose rules
we define
and
choose

Choose for this game
with every play
who wins or loses –
only caveat
it I who is each player
not them

It is I who Can
only win
it is I who Can
only loose

It is then that
I know that
I am
not I
so with we
me
and them

We all just paint
in serious colors
as if any of it
really mattered
–
even the seriousness
has no matter

It is a game
like we all played
as kids
a game we play
for fun
for pretend
as if it were
all that was real

Is this so outspoken?
To laugh at reality
at you and me
and them
to make jest of
life’s living and it’s death
to profane the sacred
and make sacred the profane?

Is not the making of
the playing of
the being in the game
the game?

Is there not pretentiousness
in pretending reality is
really real
as if real has any meaning
other than what we give it
to be?

Paint authentic reality
with dazzling water colors
on a rainy day
and perhaps after the storm
your canvas will be clear
clear to paint a new
and more magnificent
authenticity

Paint in the rain
write words
in the shifting windblown
sands of the Sahara
for therein
lies their
permanence

Sit in the
crystal bubble of
sand melted
by heat of
this moment

There is the wasteland
there in the lush green
forest of our being

One Day the Sun

One Day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
the infinite incandescence
that has cast
my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
when you are lonely
or in darkness
the Astonishing Light
of your own being!

- HAFIZ....

Who is the shadow in the dark corner of darkness?

This darkest of souls
assassinates wonder
with reason
slaughters awe
with logic
defecates on
mystery's magic
and claims
it is light
truth
and right.

An evil not
to be found
across the room
the city
county
or world.

It far
more insidious
and certainly
much more intimate
than that.

It's voice I hear -
ego raging
with reason and logic
echoing in
my fog filled mind
as I wake.

Beginning each day
I gazing upon its face
there starring back
from an expressionless mirror.

There can be found
no other person
being
or thing
to be more feared
or more devastating
than that which I find
lurking within.

If there are demons
with which to do battle
let it first be with those
inside who masquerade
as me.

Because in truth
there are none
in this
or any world
I could find
who would do
more harm

Dark Rush

There are souls whose origin
is from the dark,
empty corners
of darkness it’s self.

Coming into this world
walking
breathing
sitting next to you
in your place of work
on a park bench
even your places
of worship.

These dark shadows
from darkness
like black holes
suck life
light
and purpose
from any living
being
which comes
close to them -
while you
sit transfixed
mesmerized
by their words
thoughts
and their caresses
of your being.

They come into
this world
memory
of who
and
what they are
all lost
erased
as if it never was.

Were you
to see one of these dark ones
there would be nothing
strange or unusual -
for all your senses
your perceptions
and intuitions
would tell you
they are as
any of you
loving
kind and
caring
wishing only
for your well being.

If you had eyes
to see into their
soul
you would
see the dark
parasitic spirit
poised ready
to seize your
most precious life
wrenching it
your grasp.

Even with this sight
to see -
they, like a two headed
snake, would fill you
with fascination
and curiosity -
enticing you always
to watch
to come closer -
but seeing,
you would stop
never letting them close
never inviting
them into your bed.

ah but,
only if you
had the sight
you would be saved
from the fate
which surely now
awaits you.

And for these dark souls
their greatest rush
and joy in life is
death.

Death is the greatest rush in life
for only then
do they go back to
the darkness from
whence they came -
back to the darkness
to finally be home
to finally find their
belonging.

Sunrise on a Cloudy Day

I sat watching fire spread across the sky, as the sun began its trek across a sky swarming; filled with white, gray and nearly black tumultuous clouds bursting into a kaleidoscopic dance of iridescent flames. I sat and watched, silently remembering so many prayerful wishes, hoping to share just one of these precious moments with another. Yet, no matter with whom I found myself or how many times I sat with them watching the display unfold, I always felt so isolated and alone.

Today, I sat and watched the sunrise, and I knew perhaps for the first time, this is a very personal and private moment; an intimate touching and comingling between the essence of my being and the divine. I knew that I was not, nor ever was alone, the divine feminine was always there sitting close beside me, I in her embrace, sharing in all the awe and wonder of this eternal moment poking holes in time.

Beauty

... Beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us.

- Rainer Maria Rilke from the Duino Elegies

Discerning Nows

I find myself firmly
planted between
what was and what I am
grappling feverishly with
all I believe lies
in what will be.

Panic stricken thoughts
desperate attempts to flee
Langoliers
gobbling up
devouring
remnants of a once
living world.

While Rose’s spring
fragrance rots consumed
as fiery sunsets
become frozen gray
and frosted grass
cuts like glass shards
under naked feet

Today’s dawn
unfolds revealing
Van Gough’s
Starry Night
so stark and real

But, we all came as children
riding the crest of time
future laying
down before us
past falling away
behind

Yes, they came as children
golden shore calling
opportunistic waves washing over
with each attempted
grasp

An endless Swim upstream
to find the sea
blinded by desire
paralyzed with fear
lost in illusion of need

Hope my parched desert
which will never taste
the rain
scorched, burnt
nothing left to bloom

All but delusions
mist filled forests
cloaking
cool mountain streams
flowered meadows
lush after warm
spring rain

Birds sing
melodious
sonnets
caressing my heart
with unconditional love

Crest of life
of time
forever
the only
place I have
ever been

Ever now
no then nor when
nor loss
nor win

I ride this the
wave of now
cross eternities brow

CPU and a Rose

“Suddenly I am seeing inside one of the homes of the common people. Everything is simple. Everything has its place. There is a sense of order to everything. I am able to discern, by watching the people, that they perceive their homes to be “alive.” The wood beams, the stone walls, and the hearth seem to hold consciousness or presence for them. For these people everything is alive; the entire island is alive, every blade of grass, every pebble, every drop of drew. The island is a conscious, sentient being. Whatever this presence is seems to dwell at the heart, at the very center of their lives as a people. I find myself feeling a deep longing to know such a sense of profound connection, relatedness, order, and harmony. This quality is strangely familiar to me but foreign to the reality of my life as I know it. I realize I have been yearning for this feeling my whole life.”

(from “The Spiral of Memory and Belonging” by Frank MacEowen)



Sometimes I run across something I read which speaks of a place or time familiar and yet foreign at once, such as the above paragraph in Frank MacEowen’s book. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to actually experience this vision directly. The impact of just reading it was a moving experience on its own. I know and have known this yearning he speaks of for as long as I can remember and had found it so hard to articulate.
I have always felt the world (and everything in it) to be alive and otherworldly, while simultaneously feeling what my senses and reason said it was. I felt these all to be true, even though they were all in strong contradiction to each other. The aliveness extends from nature with her forests, plants, streams and stones to buildings, machines and computers.
While many may feel a spiritual connection to nature, I wonder how many also feel the same type of connection to their computers, furniture or tools? When I am creating software applications, it is not just about logically organizing computer code, it is also about feeling the code in the language I am programming in, while at the same time seeing and feeling the vision of the final application. It takes on a life of its own, drawing me into its dance. I rarely if ever know where or how it will go; it just happens and grows on its own. Like planting a seed, which take in the nourishment it needs and becomes the life form it was destined to be.
Computers, technology even our modes of transportation are far from simple. Where is the simplicity in the CPU of my laptop? Where is the simplicity under the hood of my car? Have you really looked in the engine compartment of a newer model car and seen all the myriad of hoses and wires?
I can even ask where is the simplicity in the biology of a rose bush? The millions of cells with their Nuclei, vacuoles, chloroplasts, mitochondria and many more categorized parts; each with its own language of expression and volumes of scientific studies to define what it is. With our specialized sciences with names such as Proteomics, Metabolomics, Microbiology and Genetics, just to name a few; we have seemly limitless categorizations with which to understand and enhance our interaction with other life forms.
Perhaps the simplicity is not in the things themselves but, is instead in my or our relationship to them and how many of these relationships there are. There are simply too many things, so much so that one rarely has the time to interact or appreciate any of them. We live in a time of extreme consumerism, where something as simple and timeless as pot to cook in is no longer just a matter of going to get the pot but, may even seem to require a major research project to review the hundreds or maybe even thousands of different types and brands of pots to find the one, best pot. This is not counting all the specialized utensils and accessories we are being told we need to cook with that one best pot. Then there is always the question of is there going to be a better one next year which will require, of course, the replacement of our one best pot and ALL the best pot accessories.
The problem is perhaps not the choices themselves but, the belief that we MUST make them, because our own self worth and reason for existence is dependent upon the choices we make for our STUFF. That to continue to have a meaningful life we need to constantly be juggling our stuff to create the meaning.
We have become buried under hundreds or thousands of things, rather than having meaningful relationships to a few selected living beings, like friends that we work with. These beings could extremely complex either internally or by way of our interaction with them but, our relationship is one of friendship, reverence and connectedness.

So what is your relationship to your pot, your car or computer? What is your relationship to our forests, community and the earth its self? Are even your friends just another addition to your stuff?

I know in my case I need some serious dumpsters for my life cleaning.

Flowers and a Flute