Brian’s Reflection: Friday, September 28, 2007


Hoping to Be More Alive

You are an ocean in a drop of dew,
all the universes in a thin sack of blood.

What are these pleasures then,
these joys, these worlds
that you keep reaching for,
hoping they will make you more alive?

- Rumi, Sufi poet


Long ago I realized that “God” was not “out there” -
as someone wisely said, There is no “out there” out there.

That the body is a “drop of dew”, mostly water,
Some bits of other things, stringy, bony, fiber-y, electric-y,
five-foot something, c. 160 (hope springs eternal),
in which is an Ocean, vast and mysterious, with
undiscovered things yet to swim by in some unexpected light
cast by us, if we are curious and courageous,
or by another, bidden or unbidden.
So we, at differing rates of time
like the Ocean produce complex Life
and live It. Or don’t.

That within the matrix of skin
containing a “thin sack of blood”
are all the universes, comprising Existence -
spirals and ellipticals and irregulars.

Gaze within. What will make you more alive
is in there, not out there.
First see the Holy Self.
Then the Pleasures, the Joys, the “Worlds” of Wonders
will come rushing in or up from everywhere
to join the whirling Aliveness
that you and God are dancing.

Brian+