God

I remember
when I was a child
and we would go
to the temple
of stone and glass
and sit in a quiet
reverence
while being told
of the gate-keeper
to inner-soul wisdom--
the magic syllables
that would unlock
a Paradise as of yet
unattained

In the pews
faces filled
with the grey-world
of brow-sweat desperation,
Ears dulled
to the calls of Heaven
by the hot-iron battles
of innumerable factories,
Who had forgotten
the sun's soft touch
or the feel of grass
beneath the feet

After the sermon
had ended
we would pile back
into the car for
the trip home,
where I would
rid myself of
the confines of
Sunday clothes
and go and let
my mind follow
sun-filled creek
downstream
to the place of
worship--

Ears filled
with whispering pines
and sky's blue-eternity,
The lightning of illumination
opens my eyes--
what man can put a
name on God?

Heaven
starts
where words
end

Tzu-jan

I actually happened upon the following quote just a few moments after having finished the blog below, but thought it apt:

"This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial--more than a terrestrial river--which might have suggested that which surrounded the shield of Homer. If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? Have I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life's current?"--Henry David Thoreau

I walk down the street, but I feel always as if I am floating on the silvery face of a stream, as if time were a vehicle and the mere act of existence itself was a continuous act of movement with everything constantly in a state of flux. And as the stream wore the great chasm of the Grand Canyon into the desert floor, so too does the current of time run across the surface of existence, wearing its signature into everything it comes into contact with.

We are all pushed forward by the current, whether we wish to be or not. Even trees and mountains cannot escape the forward flow. Perishing and rising again, we move in rhythm to the jade pattern.

The memories of all those days spent in the bow of a canoe come rushing back to me, when I observed the beauty of the paddle cutting into the quiet stream, or the churning roar of the whitewater. I learned how to read the river, to see in advance the easiest path, which was always the one where you rode on the back of the river and let it guide you through. I don't think that this life is much different. It's all a matter of following the current and knowing where to position one's self at the right moment--a sort of dance where everything is in perfect rhythm and synchronicity, for we are all children of the stream, all set to the beat of that wonderful dance called life.