Sun, Water, Sky, and Me

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.

Poetics & Photographs: Shared Note

Namaste and greetings

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.

The Alchemy of Rain: A Poem & a Picture (or two)

THE ALCHEMY OF RAIN


Surya’s life-giving energies shine upon
scattered and drifting, yet converging, patches dotting the clear blue sky.
Silver linings, so they say,
granted to those scattered grey clouds.

Those clouds, those grey scattered and converging clouds,
bless.
Bless the domain of Varuna,
God of the skies
with the potential for change.
All forms change.

Clouds, silver-lined or no,
are Varuna,
for he is also God of the skies.
And now, with clouds’ convergence,
the expectancy ends:
the change begins.

The Sun, still present, yet his light blotted out
by those very clouds – joins Varuna
In the form of the cloud. Alchemy.

From the convergence of energy and matter
water droplets emerge;
Varuna has remanifested,
and falls to wet Earth below.

To cleanse the dust from all things
living and non-living.
From the feathers of the winged-ones;
From the fur of the four-legged;
To quench the thirst of the Tree People.
And to moisten the throats of us, the Two Legged.

Thank you my friends.

May your day be blessed by both Surya and Varuna, in the correct measure and balance that is for the benifit of all beings.