Have you seen the new page on the blog? It’s called Poems of Devotion (no prizes for guessing what’s on that page).
What you’ll see when you get there!
You are warmly invited to head over there to read and enjoy a poem. Or perhaps two, or seven! The choice is yours.
The page, as you already guessed, seeing right through the extremely obscure title, is dedicated solely to devotional poems I have composed. Many have been written in recent times, though there are some which are, well, no longer the new kids on the block (get it? New kids on the block? New page on the blog? Oh, okay, never mind).
I hope to continue my occasional practice of featuring a poem in a post (perhaps with its story or some other commentary). But, in time, all my devotional poetic pieces will be on the new page.
You are very welcome to visit the page, Poems of Devotion, to read, to contemplate, and if you so wish, copy anything you find there for your own reflections or to share with others.
Love & beauty; What else is there?
I’m grateful that I have come somehow to compose these poems of praise and love. I call it a gift of grace that has been granted me. It is a gift I now ask that I may share with you.
Surrender is a key issue for our community of Hermits. Surrender in the sense of, to put it really simply, how to just go with the flow; how to recognise that the universe moves as it does, and how might we fully realise that while we do what we can, playing our part, in the final analysis, life unfolds as it does.
Like I guess, most people we often have trouble accepting the so-called realities of life like bodily changes, world events that sadden, shock or outrage us. You know what I’m talking about. We just like stuff to work out just as we would prefer, and when it doesn’t? Well that’s when we suffer; we get angry, frustrated or sad or otherwise affected emotionally and even physically. Again you know what I mean.
Courtesy of our resident artist
‘The will of God’ or ‘the will of the Universe’ are common recommendations for surrendering to. But of course ‘God’ or the ‘Universe’ have no will of their own; it simply is what it is, and follows the laws of nature, the natural order of life the Universe and everything as has been famously said time and again.
So, a small poetic offering on just that theme of surrender. This time asking: surrender to whom or to what? The answer I come up with is perhaps not as far out as it might first appear when you read it. Maybe we’ll do a post looking more deeply at that one.
Anyway, please accept my small offering.
WE SHALL SURRENDER UNTO WHOM?
To whom, or to what shall we surrender? We are hermits; we dwell in a hermitage. Here are our cells, our Paradise. A walled enclosure unto which we may surrender.
Varuna and Surya. the Hindu deities of sky and all Earth’s waters (Varuna), and our sun (Surya). These names resonate for me. I like how such great natural phenomena fundamental to our existence on this planet, can be ‘personalised’ in this way.
I find that having acquired symbolic or representational names for sky, water, and sun, has allowed me to somehow relate to the inherent giving and preserving of the energies that power all life that water, sky, and sun provide in a prayerful, thankful way. Kind of makes it personal.
Let me put aside for a moment the obvious scientific reality that tells us we can’t live long without water, can’t live at all without the gases in our atmosphere, and if the sun goes dark for whatever length of time it is, then all life ceases to exist.
How many times have I stood in awe watching a sunset?
Or watched as big waves rolled in with a surfer hoping for a ride?
How many times have I welcomed the sound of rain on a roof and the sight of it nourishing trees or other life
And how many times have I sat on or walked along a riverbank feeling uplifted and a little more grounded?
Many, many times is the short answer. Varuna and Surya are constant presences in our lives. And I am grateful for the life-giving and life-sustaining natures of their existence.
Sharing with you today, a little poetic expression of one of those times when sky, water, and sun, gave me just a little more than those fundamental material energies.
ONCE AGAIN VARUNA AND SURYA
Once again, Varuna and Surya are coming to make rescue. They arrive on – as in fact they are – the currents and eddies of the river of life. In this way, the natural order remains in motion.
Shared with love
from Paul the hermit
Flow river go, past the shady tree. Flow river flow, flow to the sea. Flow river flow, flow to the sea.
Thanks to Roger McGuinn for one of the classic flowing on a river songs.
Deceptively simple is how I’d thought to describe the lyrics of a love song by John Lennon I heard again recently for the first time in years.
But, no I thought straight away, that’s not right. The message of the song is simple, and the lyrics convey that message to us just as simply.
Of course why the song is so powerful – and personally significant to me and so many others – is that, while the message may be simple, the ramifications of really hearing the lyrics, really digging the words and trying to put them into action, are far from simple or limited and have few if any boundaries of any kind.
The one word title of the song I’m talking about says it all: Love. Lennon included Love on his first solo album with the Plastic Ono Band, which was released in 1970. So not actually a solo album, but you know what I mean.
The original purpose of this post was to share with you a poem I wrote in response to reconnecting with this masterpiece.
While I will still be sharing that poem, I thought I would first let you see the lyrics of Love put together through my own listenings to the song itself. No copyright breach is intended here. I only print the lyrics for illustration purposes, and besides, if you can’t share a song called Love, by John Lennon, what can you share?
If before or after reading the lyrics you prefer to actually listen to the song being sung by John, then just head here for a great early version.
Love is real, real is love. Love is feeling, feeling love. Love is wanting to be loved.
Love is touch, touch is love. Love is reaching, reaching love. Love is asking to be loved.
Love is you, You and me. Love is knowing We can be.
Love is free, free is love, Love is living, living love. Love is needing to be loved.
You see? Simple lyrics, simple melody, but the message! It’s all about the message. Or is it an invocation? A love mantra?
Mind you, the song is presented in such a light-hearted and gentle soft manner, that it might be easy for some to dismisss the message as being merely wishful or fluffy thinking. But, there really isn’t anything fluffy about love is there?
Now, to my response. Well one response among many I should say. I offer this poetic effort in humility and gratitude – indeed, in and with love.
John was a singer and a writer of songs. John was a friend of mine – yet never known personally. Yet known by me all my life. A fab friend for everyone.
John wrote songs, songs he sang, lyrics given life by voices very few heard. It was hysterical.
He wrote a love song, a song I heard and loved. In fact, a whole lot of love songs he wrote. One verse, in that one song, caught my ear, snatched at my heart.
This is the verse, the stanza I love: Love is you You and me Love is knowing We can be.
No sickly, sweet sentiment this. Not like some plastic bobble-head lurking in some grubby rear window. No, as the song he wrote says: Love is real.
Love not for the sake of getting it right all the time; Love not for the sake of always looking like the good guy; Love not for the sake of a distant and cold devotion; But love, Love for you alone.
Today, a poem for your reading and contemplative pleasure. The title of the poem comes references a verse from the Bhagavad Gita in which Lord Krishna talks about what are acceptable offerings: He tells Arjuna that God, or the Divine will accept even a leaf as an offering of devotion.
So, when I returned to the Hermitage one day recently to find two leaves on the ground at the front gate, I recalled that verse and decided to make of those leaves, just such an offering.
The Hermit Pilgrims have signed a lease for the rent of a house for a year. Not only have we signed a lease, we have, in fact as of yesterday, been residing in the said leased property.
Admittedly, it’s exactly the sort of small house which we had in fact been longing for for some time. It’s got many characteristics that make it for us, the ideal site for a hermitage: we even have a temple room!
The lease is for a year initially, and if, after a year we feel led to move on, then that’s what we shall do. But for now, – as in the present moment that is the ongoing now, the only ‘time’ one can talk about with any meaning or truth – we will be in the one hermitage, the one safehaven by the side of the road, for a longer period than in any other in the last many years.
Anyway, enough of this reflection on the nature of time; the big question on your mind I am sure is why? Well, the first little thing to say is that the pilgrimage goes on; it’s just that we’ve taken a tiny step towards the vow of stability many monks and nuns make as a matter of course. We’ve not really ever taken such a vow before. Mind you, a lease is a binding document, I wonder does that count as a vow?
Of course, as I’ve just laboriously spelled out, there is only the moment, the ongoing now; so who can possibly say about ‘a year’?
Next, let me tell you a bit about a book I’ve read a few times and like very much. It will possibly give you a flavour of the why.
Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie tells the story of Tenzin Palmo, a Tibetan Buddhist nun and her, I think, twelve years in solitu6de in a nearly all year round snowed in cave in the high Himalayas.
Tenzin Palmo had been living in a rather remote monastery, but felt after some years the need for greater isolation and solitude. The monastery was too busy and noisy, with all sorts of comings and goings.
There was too much entanglement with the greater society in the form of the surrounding villages and town. She wanted some quiet basically
In an interview sometime after she came down from the mountains she was asked if going to a cave was perhaps an escape, an ‘evasion of the trials of an “ordinary” life. Her reply spoke to me when I first read it about 20 (or more?) years ago, and still does today:
‘Not at all. To my mind worldly life is an escape,’ she replied to the interviewer. ‘When you have a problem you can turn on the television, phone a friend, go out for a coffee. In a cave, however, you have no one to turn to but yourself.
You have no choice, she says, when problems come up, and when things get tough, but to go through with them, till you come out the other side.
‘In a cave,’ she said, ‘ you face your own nature in the raw, you have to find a way of working with it and dealing with it.’
My situation is not quite like hers. For example there is more than one person in our community of hermits. Still her story does resonate and speaks very much to my own situation.
Not only is there never going to be any absolute certainty in our material world, there is never – ever – going to be anything in the realm of worldly things that will deliver us perfect peace and lasting happiness.
Easy to repeat, this tidbit of transcendental knowledge, but quite another to get oneself unattached to the idea that, well, maybe, just maybe, the next big thing, might just be different, might indeed be the forever answer to peace and happiness.
And it’s that attachment that I’m tackling at the moment.You see I long for a more pure hermit life, a life with a lot less engagement – and entanglement with – worldly things and situations.
I once wrote in a poem calledSeeking Noble Truths or Just Passing Through that ‘longing is loss’, and it is, if one is attached or clings to the object of desire, or an outcome being exactly as is envisaged. Not being attached means less disappointment, less suffering, if as often happens, life does its thing and the outcome is not what we hoped it would be.
But here’s the thing: the bonds of my attachments in this area are loosening a little, bit by bit. And the paradox isn’t lost on me either: As I ‘settle’ into our (supposedly) longer term hermitage, I will, I hope, come closer to a point of stillness, of equanimity, and of silence. I will inch even closer to that state where attachments will all just fall away.
Hermit caves take many and varied forms
Now, in no particular order of priority or preference, I’ll try to convey in words some of the reasons we’re opting to continue our pilgrimage in a more long-term hermitage.
To be honest, as hard as I try to be present, to just live here and now, I just like the vast majority of my fellow human beings, find it extremely difficult to not be pulled ahead to the future (or dragged back to the past for that matter).
No sooner have we moved into a new hermitage, then we feel we have to start shopping around for the next one. Of course, one can’t ignore the practicalities, but for me it goes way beyond being a sensible planner.
And to be perfectly frank (I wonder who this ‘frank’ is anyway?) we’ve tired of it. The looking, the thinking, the talking and emailing to prospective places. It’s actually quite boring, to be stuck on that kind of merry-go-round .
It’s also extremely distracting. It gets in the way of our efforts to calm and quieten our minds for extended and deeper meditation and contemplation. Not to mention the ongoing (seems endless sometimes) discussions of the pros and cons of decisions to be made, as well as the frustrating second guessing I’m famous for.
Portrait of a Hermitage
We all know from experience that there is never going to be any absolute certainty in anything we arrange in our lives. Of course I know very well that even a signed, sealed and delivered legally binding contract or lease, means very little if the parties involved put their minds to it or change plans somewhere along the way.
All things in the material world are relative, and always subject to change; there’s nothing we can do to bend that natural law. Given such a context we still feel okay about entering with a right-hearted intention, this agreement for a year (at least) in the new hermitage.
As the residents of the hermitage are prone to say really quite often: ‘Your will, not mine, be done’.
Then, when life does its thing, I’ll be more able to roll with it. Why? Because I will (hopefully) have better learned that it’s not my will that’s to be done, but the Divine Will, the natural law and order of the Universe.
Japa, or the chanting of the names of God or the Divine, is a central spiritual practice for me. In fact, as time goes by, it becomes even more important for me as I try to spend more time chanting than not!
With Japa in mind I climbed yesterday to the crest of the sand dune on which our current hermitage is situated, to spend a while with the sea and the dunefield flowers, the birds, and as I planned to be doing some chanting, also with those unseen aspects of the Divine that I would be addressing with my words.
As seems to be happening quite often these days when I immerse myself in the beauty that is to be found all around me, all that is to be seen and experienced ‘up there’ as it’s come to be called, a poem wrote itself about yesterday’s particular excursion and experience.
I share it with you now in the hope you will enjoy reading it; thank you for reading it!
Perched upon the crest of a sand dune, I chant the names of the Lord Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Rama Hare Rama
I am still; the Lord’s names vibrate in my mind. But Varuna’s energy washes saltwater back and forth in the middle distance. Sea waves manifest from depths unknown. Sea waves dissolve on the shore in the middle distance.
Now, in the near distance, near to me where I rest and chant on sacred ground, flowers with yellow heads, purple heads, wave in the wind as if ecstatically dancing to a holy Kirtan gifted them by the wind.
These myriad jewels in the dunefield join me in my japa. Or is it that I merge with their sacred dances?
It’s neither, and yet it’s both: The beautiful blooms are me, and I am them. We are the One, Chanting and dancing the names of the One.
Reading the other day about the deeper meanings of the word Amen, a memory surfaced.
A memory from the summer of 1971. I was seventeen years old; young yes. I was hitchhiking around Europe, and as for this memory in particular, I was sitting day by day in the Dam Square in Amsterdam.
The memory of which we are speaking involves chanting. One day (or it could have been more), chanting, along with dozens, perhaps hundreds of hippies, freaks, travellers from all over the world, assorted tourists and locals. Chanting Amen. Just like Sidney Poitier sings in Lilies of the Field. Minus all the verses; we chanted the chorus only. Amen. To help get the vibe, just go here.
Anyway, it was a nice memory, a memory of a day (and more) of music in a time of exploration, on the road and trying to be free.
More that that though: experiencing the memory gave me the feeling that that day, in the Square, had included at least a moment of devotion.
Sure, it was likely just one more tune among many sung during those times, but as I think about it now, I sense a distinct vibe of devotion and praise. I recall a sense of a kind of rejoicing in the word itself – Amen.
Anyway, here is the resulting poem. Do look up the chant; and do please join in, add your voice – your own distinct vibration – to the gathered voices.
Amen
DAYS OF AMSTERDAM CHANTING
Once upon a time I hitchhiked to Holland. Another mad attempted escape, trying to leave the madness behind. Amen.
Crashing in the park in the night, beneath a bridge – when it rained, behind the bushes – when it didn’t. Amen.
Squatting in the Square in the day. Sometimes singing days. Dozens of hippies, freaks, travellers, and even a few tourists and locals. Amen.
Many memories of those days remain. Like this one: I was 17, you see, in those days, squatting in the Square – Dam Square. Music in all directions. Truly surround sound. Guitars, bongos, reedy things like flutes and whistles, even a trumpet I can recall. Amen.
Then, a chant erupts, and soon engulfs the gathered. Amen … Amen … Amen, Amen, Amen.
And, now, I’ve joined the chanting, maracas shaking held high, as if in exalted devotion, as I sway to vibration overwhelming. Amen.
This entrancing word, this creative vibration, how long did it linger, permeating the very air I was breathing? Amen.
Memory informs: it was hours. That is to say, it was eternal – or was it a mere moment? Same. Of course, Amen – Om – the vibration of creation was never born, is never changing, always existent. Amen.
Always creating. Always dissolving. Then again creating. Making manifest that which was unmanifest. Amen.
Or, is it a sound and light show? Amen, the word, the vibration, the sound shining a light on what is there already? And what is there already, is all there is. Amen Amen Amen
Another poetic and photographic note to share with you today. In the last month or so I’ve written two poems which are about angels. And both connected in some way with rain, or at least impending rain in one and actual rain in the other.
Initially I thought to just include the most recent of the two, but as I put my fingers on the keyboard it just seems to be emerging that I shall share both with you. And as you know I’m not one to ignore the demands of what types me!
Anyway, I offer them to your for your reading pleasure and perhaps cause for contemplation. Last shall be first in this matter I think. Enjoy please!
Angels, they are everywhere. Perhaps there are more than we know? Personifications of love, of compassion. Of charity too.
ON THE TEARS OF ANGELS
Is it good that angels cry? Anyway, why do they cry at all?
To wash away all the sorrows, to cleanse, to purify, to make new. And to ease the world’s pain.
Then, there are those of us who can’t conceive of ourselves as angels.
For those ones – each and every one – the tears of angels are cathartic; granting catharsis.
A CLOUD ANGEL SEEN
An angel wing seen in a cloud, ephemeral, gossamer. And the angel? She stands concealed within the silver linings of clouds, neighbouring clouds, heralding a soon to be descending deluge.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 