Posted on by Glenn Mower

Isolating with Sidney (for the record it’s a stay at home poem)

Sitting here with

Sidney Bechet
Live!
24th Mai
Redez-vous Club.
Him and me
in my 1950 Philadelphie
reverie
a surprised sigh
yearns for the clink and clatter
and the slightly pickled
muffled laughter that,
only this January,
definitely
disturbed the clarity
of the great vinyl
spinal tingle
That is you

You see, with this distortion
in mind
I contort to
send my ears beyond this
long gone Jazz friend.

Now surprised
as I say
in my noticing in
my deepening reluctance
to let it be ‘just one of those things’
those social gatherings
that syncopate
brilliantly only
to end too early

instinctively
I decide I need
to pick myself and
the needle up
and with new found instant relief

I resolve to reach out
and to play once again
within yesterdays social rounds:
discovering wellness
in the sweetest of sweet conversations

far beyond his Georgia Brownness
and today’s wistful uncovering of grief.

Bechet

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Stretching the Beatitudes

Blessed are

the softened ones, the peacemakers, the pure in heart

With gentleness and unity they grow with Grace consistently

Near to Light are they that mourn while hungering for Life re-bourn

and Blessed are the merciful, those wishing well to one and all

Renewal comes to aching hearts who warm in Love while pulled apart

For everyone is to us, what we think them to be

Of course, the stone can feel no pain:

They are denuded, they do not flourish, nor do they blossom into ripening fruit

Within this Blessed sun and rain.

(Blessed pronounced Ble-ssed)

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Beauty is always here.

I am

 

currently slowly reading and pondering over some of the wonderful message given to this world by Hazrat Inayat Khan. Upon this continuing nexus of change he soothes by reminding the deep that:

 

‘It is the greatest relief to forget, it is like bathing in the Ganges.

The present has so many beautiful things to offer us;

if only we open our eyes to look at them

we do not need look for beauty in the past.

Beauty is always here.’

 

(page 198 of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, vol V111)

 

‘

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Traffic jamming Light and Grace

Fuming beyond

this zebra crossing dripping throng

this head down, striding long

Gortex sway of human form

as wiper blades scud and grate

across this screen that separates

my heart from spleen from

gentle grace of

worried lines on

brethren’s face.

 

And yet.

 

unknowingly still I bow, yes

beyond this dashboard reach

for conditioning air

this rain filled rage begins to clear

as Lightening weight accelerates

and soft green shoots now reappear.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

oiling Your palm

 

pausing I pour

 this way and that

that

i may disappear

within Your honeyed

Translucence

fertile and pure

Your

sweet pulsing elegance

in Grace-fuelled dhikr

 immersing

soft green shoots of

Eastern Sun Light

 palm pressing fresh fruits

needing till ripe with

Great goodness seeping

through pulp, pith and kin

earthly distinctions

composting in Him.

 

the above was written in response to:

The Head of The Prophecy (6,21-8,27)

‘It is like a palm shoot whose dates dropped around it. It produced buds and after they grew, its productivity dried up.

It certainly would be good if you produce new growth now. You would certainly find it.’

Know Yourselves (12,17-13,25)

 

‘Be eager to harvest for yourselves a head of the grain of life that you may be filled with the kingdom.

Do not be proud because of the light that enlightens. Rather, act towards yourselves as I myself have toward you. ’

(quoted from ‘The secret book of James’  which is the first chapter in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures edited by Marvin Meyer published by Harper One in 2007)

 

Next blogs: The Gospel of Truth.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

secret books & gnosis galore

The Oxfam Bookshop on Park Street

has offered me the chance to buy The Nag Hammadi scriptures.

£8:95 and the complete 1945 discoveries are at my finger-tips, and now happily are upon my desktop too.

First expedition in the unknown; The Secret Book of James:

 

on Being filled and lacking (3,38-4,22)

‘So you should lack when you can fill yourselves and be filled when you lack, that you may be able to fill yourselves more. Be filled with Spirit, but lack in reason, for reason is of the soul. It is soul.’

To the ears of my heart this guides and glides me further into meditating and ultimately living contemplatively.

unpicking the two sentences, I follow:

  • So you should lack when you can fill yourselves 

Morning and evening are times when I can intentionally wait to be filled with Spirit.

These 20 minute bookends to my day are my precious times of Centering Prayer. Times when I initially pause and ask, hope and wait to to be emptied (lacked?) of body, mind, sight, sense and feeling.

20 minutes nearing to nothingness. A process of gently feathering my incessant thinking upon the breath of God. Time, yes much time to let go of thoughts and to nestle, nestle and nestle again within wideness and depth beyond this skin.

To become Another’s vessel.

20 minutes, twice a day where I AM resonates somewhere deep and unseen and well and well and well beyond this surface practice of sitting upon a cushion, of waiting and welcoming and repeatedly letting go of all earthly reasoning, of breathing, opening to release these-every-day-ego-driven-collections-and-confections-of-this -and-that-and-the-other.

In other words, to hope beyond words and to become no thing at all.

And after the bell sounds, after the 2 further minutes of peaceful momentary pause, I come back to the waves and vibrations of this bodily living.

  • and be filled when you lack, that you may be able to fill yourselves more.

The peaceful evening pause often helps me glide into a sleepfulness where my lack is unconsciously met and processed, sometimes without trace, sometimes within the sweat and ruffled bed-sheets.

The peaceful morning pause however can become consciously dismantled and plunged into active lacking in minutes, seconds even.

And yet even within the greatest shift into earthly lack, into this worrisome world of  soulful endeavour, even when face down in ego and mud,

A sense, an internal shift towards openness, towards a potential filling with Spirit,  has indeed been growing day on day.

Now, when buffeted by my so-say-sufferings, when daily bemused and angered and hurt by the daze of human botherings tiresomely gathering around this blood, flesh and bone,  I can sometimes pause.

Pause and somehow re-taste elements these 20 minutes, twice daily. And in this glimpse, I can meet the lack in us with a silence and a smile that greets suffering with  an overspilling, unnameable, abundancy that is well and truly beyond the very fabric of me.

Next blog: Know Yourselves (12,17-13,25)