You can tell by the fireworks.
To this day,
people’s hearts are set to the clocks
in their homelands,
far away.
They go off at different times,
then the smoke clears and the sky
remains mysterious and quiet until the next
full hour.
You can tell by the fireworks.
To this fateful day,
the last of 2020,
when the cheer is inaudible,
they still explode to the clocks
of faraway homelands.
In the dead of night –
In that longest of nights
he came to me,
all aglow.
An illumination of love.
I was ready to let go,
having run out of things to hold on to.
“The world has done violence to your spirit”,
he spoke through my sleeplessness,
and his voice was husky.
“But fear not. I have defeated the world.”
I lay with him on the threshold and –
breath by long, quiet breath –
I bore him children
of peace.
Healing is a feline
treading stealthily around the concrete monoliths
of the neighborhood –
slow and lazy
and clandestine.
A striped tow of light,
sheaves of color falling from the trees,
pigment dripping
from the November
sky
and gathering in little pools
of gold
in your heart
to glitter in the dark
of winter.
Setting: Catholic religion class at school.
Characters: New teacher – a man. A bunch of 9-year-olds.
Open discussion about covenants. (Based loosely on recollection, don’t shoot the messenger!)
Girl in my daughter’s class, with genuine curiosity: Why are all the priests men? Why are there no women priests?
Teacher, gently: Well, you see, Jesus was a man, and his apostles were men, and…
Several girls in my daughter’s class: But his mother was a woman!
Teacher, full of kindness: Yes, but she could not have brought Jesus into the world without a heavenly Father…
Red-haired girl: He couldn’t have been born without a mother, either.
Teacher, softly: Yes, you’re right… but, maybe, you know, if some priests were women, then the men in church would stop paying attention to God and stare at the pretty priest…
My daughter, mumbling to herself: But the same can be true the other way around. If the priest is handsome…
Boy seated next to my daughter, searching for a solution: Maybe men are just uglier than women!
Red-haired girl: But if the women were really ugly, could they be priests then?
My daughter, musing after class: What if all the priests were women? Then there wouldn’t be any male priests to tempt… 🙂
(Ah, the dilemmas, quandaries and predicaments that arise when children are allowed to think freely. 🙂 Which, thankfully, they are.)
How the landscape changes
With the moving seasons…
No rebirth without dying
Water and cut grass
Shoulder-high saplings
And all the encounters with pain.
The piercing shrieks of white gulls
Plunging, and us happy to disintegrate
Why is it that in nature
The lost are found, and dying
Is grand and mollifying and fearless
Like an embrace?
Blessed solitude that transcends
Loneliness and need
Feeding, soothing, nursing
The lightness of your being and
The fullness of your light.
Critters, short-legged, short-lived
Going about their business
Without
Bitterness.
here I am,
sitting on a bench next to autumn
absorbing the last of the scorching sun
and watching the ants
move like clockwork
in a playground we call our own.
here they are,
mapping the maze
with staccato precision.
I am reading a poem,
like every other year.
later, I’ll get up to go home,
pass the picket fence with the tiny
porcelain cats,
walk into a heap of crunchy leaves,
and stomp out
all regrets.
Just a thought…
So many of us feel depleted, drained, stressed out. Our beings flogged from within, our lives – our biggest gift – turned into empty chases. Pursuing a zillion things that we can grab and touch and display, but which aren’t real. We live in societies that prioritize task efficiency, competition, action, and the accumulation of stuff over family, over time with friends, music, celebration, inner peace, or the contemplation of beauty.
The spiritual, once a central component of daily life – that umbilical cord to the divine – has been all but banished, relegated to the periphery, exiled to the realm of the exotic, the archaic, and the ‘oppressive’. The daily recalibration of prayer has fallen from grace and with it we have fallen – literally – from grace. From the grace of communing with the universe and with each other, the grace of transcending and accessing our higher purpose. From peace and vitality.
We bet everything on the card of desire, sleepwalking through life in a state of sterile and destructive arousal, as if remote-controlled via our most basic reflexes and deprived of the light of transfiguration. Do not be fooled that we no longer worship. We do. We worship the idol of self – the crumbling ‘natural man’ – while cutting ourselves off from our spiritual potential – the human person inhabited by holiness, true love, generosity, and joy.
The unhappiness that brings.
And how freely available the healing can be.
P.S. For more (and better!) on our aimless restlessness, our addiction to illusion and distraction, and our loathing of Eden – take a listen here: https://entitledopinions.stanford.edu/fatidic-power-literature. An episode I stumbled upon today – no kidding – after writing this blog. There are very few coincidences in life.
Venus – that ancient
goddess of carnal desire –
has a poisonous atmosphere that might,
just might,
hold the life of a microbe.
Immediately,
the microbes here on Earth
began to show signs
of restlessness.
fighting each other for supremacy
and claiming poison
as their territory.
Copyright A. Sepi 2020. All rights reserved
This summer, we got up close and personal with the Bavarian Alps. Here’s a glimpse into what they have to offer. Enjoy!
#berchtesgaden #koenigssee #oberaudorf #partnachklamm #chiemsee #kampenwand #heuberg #jenner #regensburg #unesco
Copyright 2020 A. Sepi. All rights reserved.
when she first discovered water
she did not go in.
she stood hypnotized. it was too wonderful.
she was, like the lot of us,
gripped by a fear of drowning,
arrested by the vastness and the gleaming.
to discover beauty is to discover
the heaviness of self and the terror
of irreversible sinking.
but look at her now, floating expertly on her back,
swaying with the waves
in her hair,
glistening like a fish,
all serene smiles and joy
and relaxed muscles.
weightless.
she has not mastered water.
she has mastered herself –
(the high art of belonging)
and now water buoys her,
offers her up to the sun
cupful by cupful by cupful.
Copyright 2019-2020. A. Sepi. All rights reserved
Life's journeys
Felicia
GERMAN - ENGLISH - ROMANIAN
inspiration, création
