Poem for the week: "A Corner of Your Heart"

A Corner of Your Heart

There’s a place in a corner of your heart

where the secret of your life can be found;

but so remote is this place, that only

God can find it.

There’s a place in a corner of your heart

where the grace of your life can be found;

but so remote is this place, that only

you can find it.

There’s a place in a corner of your heart

where you and God can meet; but so

remote is this place, that only

love can find it.

New poem: "Dear Reader"

Dear Reader

For whom do I write?

You, the reader, or me, the writer?

I write to write what I write,

because writing writes me, but

the words I write are for you,

Dear Reader.

Why do the words come to me

when I write? That’s the mystery

of writing no one can explain,

and yet a writer writes all the same,

because writing is his game, and

the winner is always you,

Dear Reader.

Poem for the week: "The Uptown Theatre"

The Uptown Theatre

I went online Saturday morning to see what

was playing at the Uptown Theatre in Barrie,

hoping to catch Dark Waters—a corporate

defense attorney takes on an environmental

lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes

 a lengthy history of pollution; an old movie trope,

but always fascinating—starring Mark Ruffalo

and Anne Hathaway, whom I like, and Tim

Robbins, who always annoys me; but when I went

on the Uptown Theatre’s web page, it was blank.

“Oh no, they’ve shut down!” a voice inside me

screamed. And a sad, hollow feeling came over

me to see the end of a long, comforting era when

a good movie at an old familiar theatre followed

by a nice dinner out made for a lovely evening;

but no more. God, I hate adjusting—despite its

obvious advantages—to this precarious new age

of artificial intelligence, boundless digital

certainty, intrusive algorithms, virtual reality,

and that damnable Twitter!

Poem for the week: "The Bigger Picture"

The Bigger Picture

“All we have is hope, but what hope is there?”

wrote the great dystopian author, winner of

the Booker and darling of all dystopians, her

Medusa hair and cold stare turning readers

into stone; I could never warm up to her until

I saw the bigger picture, the other side of every

story, and dear, dear Peggy (please pardon the

impertinence), Queen Dystopia, saw life through

the shadow eyes of who she was not: “There is

no hard and determined central personality, just

as you’re going to be a different person when

you’re 80 than you are now,” she said 32 years

ago in a CBC interview with Hana Gardner,

while I saw the world through the eyes of who

I was meant to be, my true self; and today, all

these many years later (she’ll be 80 November

18), she’s still fighting nihilism and despair, as

she wrote in her Booker Prize-winning novel,

and me joyful in my wholeness, I’ve come

 to respect her dystopian point of view,

because it’s also true.

New Spiritual Musing: "Bee After Bee and the Secret Way"

SPIRITUAL MUSING

Bee After Bee and the Secret Way

“Watch for the coincidences, synchronicities;

they will bring you goodness.”

—Padre Pio

I just love coincidences. I never know when they will happen, nor does anyone else for that matter (they have a mind of their own); but when they happen, they do so for a reason, and one happened the other morning to give me confirmation for something that I already knew cognitively but not quite as gnostically as I would have liked—hence, the coincidence that came to me that confirmed through personal experience what I already knew intellectually, and as confusing as this may seem, this is the inspiration for today’s spiritual musing on what C. G. Jung called “the way of what is to come,” which he also called the secret way...

In all honesty, when I’m called to write a spiritual musing I never know where my oracle and muse want to take me; and no sooner did I write the first paragraph of this musing, and I caught a glimpse of what I had been called to explore—the inexorable mystery of the omniscient guiding principle of life that poets have been exploring for centuries— “Adventure most unto itself /The Soul condemned to be; /Attended by a Single Hound— /It’s own Identity,” wrote Emily Dickinson.

That’s what we’re all looking for, our own identity, our divine true self that the omniscient guiding principle of life points us to through signs, symbols, dreams, and especially meaningful coincidences; which I came to see after years of living the secret way can only be found by growing into the person we are meant to be; that’s what made my little coincidence the other morning so timely that it crossed over into the domain of what C. G. Jung called “synchronicity,” the word he adopted to describe the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear meaningfully related but have no discernable causal connection—hence, “meaningful coincidence.”

If I may, then. While reading David Brooks’ new book the other morning, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, I came upon a passage which he believed could very well be the “pivotal point” of his whole book. Brooks quotes Annie Dillard, taken from her book Teaching a Stone to Talk—

“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our science cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other” (The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, by David Brooks, p. 64)

This was my experience, which, by happy coincidence, I had just written about in my new book One Rule to Live By: Be Good, followed up by the sequel The Fourth Corner of the Abyss that I was just bringing to closure; but because I had never heard of Annie Dillard, whose comment Brooks felt was pivotal to his new book on the quest for a moral life that he embarked upon five years after he wrote The Road to Character, I had to Google the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, which I did immediately; and what I found impressed me enough to put two of Annie Dillard’s books on my Amazon wish list: Teaching a Stone to Talk, and The Writing Life—which I had to read, because I love reading about what writers have to say about writing; so I went into Amazon’s Look Inside feature and started reading Chapter One (which she began by quoting Goethe, “Do not hurry; do not rest,”), and that’s when the remarkable little coincidence happened.

Again, if I may. I was feeling antsy the day before, and it carried over into the morning; and I was antsy because I had been watching too much Netflix, YouTube, and TV to avoid my second reading of Brooks’ book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, which I had to read again to refresh my memory so I could bring my own book The Fourth Corner of the Abyss to closure with the final chapter “The Five Stages of Life” that a dream I had and Brooks’ new book had inspired.

This antsy feeling has happened before, many times in fact, which I have explored and come to define as a mild form of spiritual restlessness that makes me apprehensive, like an annoying itch that can’t be scratched; which was how I was feeling when reading the first chapter of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.

I had to get myself out of my doldrums, but I didn’t really know how—or, I did know how, but I didn’t want to slug my way through Brooks’ book again, because the second half of the book was mostly padding; and that’s when Annie Dillard’s name lit up on me when I read the passage that Brooks quoted.

So, I Googled her to find out what I could about her, and reading something that she wrote in Chapter One of The Writing Life (thanks to Amazon’s Look Inside feature) inspired the remarkable little coincidence that gave me the inspiration I needed to get myself out of my doldrums; and here’s the passage that did it—

“To find a honey tree, first catch a bee. Catch a bee when its legs are heavy with pollen; then it is ready for home. It is simple enough to catch a bee on a flower: hold a cup or glass above the bee, and when it flies up, cap the cup with a piece of cardboard. Carry the bee to a nearby open spot—best an elevated one—release it, and watch where it goes. Keep your eyes on it as long as you can see it, and hie you to that last known place. Wait there until you see another bee; catch it, release it, and watch. Bee after bee will lead toward the honey tree, until you see the final bee enter the tree. Thoreau describes this process in his journals. So a book leads its writer.”

 This wasn’t new information for me, because I’ve been a student of the Sufi teaching for years and they have used this metaphor of bees and honey to pass on the secret teachings of the way (the omniscient guiding principle of life, which flows out of the Sufi mystic Rumi in streams of boundless wisdom), so Annie Dillard’s passage did not take me by surprise in that sense; it took me by surprise another way, because the timing was absolutely perfect—or, meaningfully coincidental, if you will; and I knew instantly what I had to do to get myself out of my annoying little doldrums: I had to be like the bee and go from flower to flower to collect the honey I needed to nourish my soul and grow out of my self-inflicted oppressive  little mood of apprehension (which I knew would morph into despair if I didn’t do something about it) that took the joy out of my day; so, I opened up a book by one of favorite poets—Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, by the American Zen poet Jane Hirshfield, the first blossom in my “honey” quest.

Jane Hirshfield is the poet that made me aware that poetry does our thinking for us, and it does so because when the poet writes a poem, he or she engage what C. G. Jung called our “transcendent function,” which he recognized as our superior insight; and when we engage our superior, or higher function, we tap into the creative energy of life, the Logos, which IS the omniscient guiding principle of life that C. G. Jung identified as the “way of what is to come” and the secret way.

So, I went to Chapter Four of Hirshfield’s book, which coincidentally enough was titled “Thoreau’s Hound: Poetry and the Hidden,” and this chapter inspired me to write a poem, “Una Bella Giornatta,” which led to more reading and writing.

That’s how I “worked” my way out of my self-inflicted annoying little doldrums, by tapping into the well of my creative higher self, which we all have access to if we make the effort (the trick is to do something, because DOING has the strange and mystical power to send those pesky little monsters back to hell where they come from; especially if it is doing for another, as I did in my poem “Una Bella Giornatta”); and that’s the deep mystery of “the way of what is to come” that C. G. Jung identified as the secret way, the omniscient guiding principle of life that fosters  personal resolution and spiritual growth through signs, symbols, dreams, and meaningful coincidences, not to mention the transformative power of poetry that is the “honey” of the secret way that nourishes our soul’s longing to be whole with the poet’s gnostic wisdom—which, ironically, was the basic theme of David Brooks’ new book, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life that I finally finished reading for the second time.

———

End of autumn poem: "Una Bella Giornatta"

Una Bella Giornatta

I raised my glass of Bosco Anice Forte, clicked

Tony’s, and said, “To a good day,” but I said it in

broken Italian, because I came to Canada when I was

only five and never learned to speak it properly; in

fact, I had forgotten most of my Italian until I met

Tony, my cottage neighbor, who only comes to his

cottage whenever he can get away, which he would

like to do more often because he loves it here in

Georgian Bay where he can do what he loves to do,

which is simply doing something to keep himself

busy, because doing something fills him with the joy

of fulfillment and gives his life purpose and meaning.  

Long-since widowed and with another woman (the

first one didn’t work out), also Italian and a widow  

but set in her ways and only comes to the cottage

when she’s in the right mood, leaving Tony to choose

between her and his cottage, but I said to him one day,

“She’s a good woman, Tony; don’t fuck this one up,”

and he listened and they’re together still, and yesterday

he came to the cottage alone because she was tending

to her family (getting things ready for her grandson’s

birthday), but Tony had to tend to his leaves, which I

helped him blow and bag (plus three wheelbarrows of

acorn seeds), and he made lunch for us, a barbeque

which he loves to do, ten blended lamb and prosciutto

skewers, two small Black Angus steaks, and two thick

pieces of pancetta, seasoning them with his favorite

spices, homemade round Calabrese bread, and a nice

hunk of Parmesan-like cheese, (apologizing for no

salad), and while waiting for the barbeque we sipped

our Anice to warm up from our morning work, and I

never felt so good for returning a favor to my good

neighbor who has always been there for me. “Una

bella giornatta,” he said, toasting our friendship

when we sat down for lunch at the kitchen table

with a glass of his homemade wine.

Poem for the week: "October's Wicked Sister"

October’s Wicked Sister

Wicked, wicked, wicked winds howled all

night long, felling trees and knocking down

hydro lines that left us in the dark for hours,

wicked winds from the west that howled their

way to la belle province, leaving devastation

in its wake with one million homes without

power (wild rose country’s revenge), and on

to the friendly east coast, howling like a beast

set free from its cage; that’s November, joyous

October’s wicked sister, and I got up and put

on a cozy fire in our Pacific Western wood

stove and waited for daylight and the hydro

crew to restore our power; and the snow began

to fly, and then the snow birds began packing

for their long-anticipated winter retreat, and

I hunkered down to write my new novel,

An Atheist, An Agnostic, and Me.

Poem for the week: A Perfect Day in Georgian Bay

A Perfect Day in Georgian Bay

April may be the cruelest month of the year

(so says Thomas Stearns Eliot), but October

 has to be the most joyous.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019, up at 5 A. M.,

made coffee (with a drop of Anisette and honey),

and ready to write my daily quota.

“Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” said Woland, the

Devil in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, 

and Chapter 20 of my story-in-progress—

The Fourth Corner of the Abyss, an elucidation

of my high school poem “Noman” that I did not

apprehend until fifty years later.

And here I am today, in beautiful Georgian Bay,

breaking new ground into the mystery of why

God called me for a reckoning.

I put on bread dough in our bread-maker for

tonight’s focaccia/pizza dinner—one roasted red

pepper, and the other hot pickled eggplant,

And I went back to work on my chapter, terrified

of not knowing where my story was going, but

trusting my muse to break new ground.

There are few joys in life as deeply satisfying as the

revelations of creative writing, and one came to me

that broke the impasse of my story— O, bliss!

Knowing where my story was going, I took my cue

from “Papa” Hemingway and dressed for my day’s

leafing, the terror of my impasse relinquished.

They fell like snowflakes yesterday from the maple

trees, oak, birch, poplar, and one beech, and the yard

was blanketed in yellow, gold, and crimson;

But I welcomed my time blowing leaves, stopping to

jot notes in my Indigo Hemingway Notebook, and

reading my weekend papers—O, heavenly bliss!

And when Penny came home, we sat on our front deck with

a tipple of wine and sherry, waiting on our focaccia/pizza;

and then I watched the news, and a movie on Netflix.

Just another fall day in beautiful Georgian Bay!