By Rado Gatchalian
What is done cannot be undone
But every step we do now
Determines our tomorrow.
We are unprepared
Everything seems to float and flout—
Until we realise something is wrong.
If it is never too late
Or if it is not too much to ask:
STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN
(Can we do our part?).
The future rests in our hands:
Let’s make it clean
Literally and metaphorically.
We are confronted with a self-examination —
Everyone seems to (mis)understand:
Man becomes a parasite to his own kind.
(But we are better than that).
Let numbers awaken our mind —
One death is too much to bear.
When our loved ones start wailing:
Will this let us stop and listen?
When everything is lost
And everything is taken for granted:
Time is telling us:
STOP. LOOK. AND LISTEN.
When we do:
We become wise.
Then, the world
Becomes a better place to thrive.
Source: The Philippine Community Herald Newspaper
April 30, 2020
30 April 2020
THE AGE OF ANXIETY
By Rado Gatchalian
There’s a death waiting on a solitary bed,
Behold, the next day is afraid of every breath.
Will we contain our misery in this unusual night
Or sleep without consuming any dream?
We become crippled, jobless, and sick —
The only faith is to live and give and live.
We look at the sky, we see an empty feeling,
Yet at this age of darkness, stars give us peace.
How shall we wait when death is waiting as well?
We say a little prayer — and — we wait for answers.
The crown intoxicates everything, everywhere,
It weakens our body — and — everyone is silent.
Like a violet moon hiding from her own fear —
A child becomes old; the old, a helpless child.
One day when all of these are done and gone:
It will be a story for our daughters and sons.
When all our untold dreams become myth
(Time, time is our only safekeeping).
Be afraid but never surrender
Be at peace but continue to love others.
Soon: when this suffering ends
A new, refreshed, life begins.
Source: The Philippine Community Herald Newspaper
April 30, 2020
There’s a death waiting on a solitary bed,
Behold, the next day is afraid of every breath.
Will we contain our misery in this unusual night
Or sleep without consuming any dream?
We become crippled, jobless, and sick —
The only faith is to live and give and live.
We look at the sky, we see an empty feeling,
Yet at this age of darkness, stars give us peace.
How shall we wait when death is waiting as well?
We say a little prayer — and — we wait for answers.
The crown intoxicates everything, everywhere,
It weakens our body — and — everyone is silent.
Like a violet moon hiding from her own fear —
A child becomes old; the old, a helpless child.
One day when all of these are done and gone:
It will be a story for our daughters and sons.
When all our untold dreams become myth
(Time, time is our only safekeeping).
Be afraid but never surrender
Be at peace but continue to love others.
Soon: when this suffering ends
A new, refreshed, life begins.
Source: The Philippine Community Herald Newspaper
April 30, 2020
29 April 2020
WE ARE THE FLUTE
We are as the flute, and the music in us is from thee;
we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.
We are as pieces of chess engaged in victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee, O thou whose qualities are comely!
Who are we, O Thou soul of our souls,
that we should remain in being beside thee?
We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable.
We all are lions, but lions on a banner:
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.
Their onward rush is visible, and the wind is unseen:
may that which is unseen not fail from us!
Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
our whole existence is from thy bringing into being.
By Rumi
Translated by: A..J. Arberry
'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from thee.
We are as pieces of chess engaged in victory and defeat:
our victory and defeat is from thee, O thou whose qualities are comely!
Who are we, O Thou soul of our souls,
that we should remain in being beside thee?
We and our existences are really non-existence;
thou art the absolute Being which manifests the perishable.
We all are lions, but lions on a banner:
because of the wind they are rushing onward from moment to moment.
Their onward rush is visible, and the wind is unseen:
may that which is unseen not fail from us!
Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
our whole existence is from thy bringing into being.
By Rumi
Translated by: A..J. Arberry
'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
27 April 2020
FOR THE FALLEN
By Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
WWI 1914
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
WWI 1914
26 April 2020
AUSTRALIA
by David Whyte
The light has come to find you again,
even on the far side of the waking world,
look inland and you catch the dark interior
core of what only looks like an empty centre,
look outward and you see the tidal run
of ocean stretching forever from the shore
on which you stand, above all and across both,
newness and the unimaginably ancient, singing together,
and then everywhere, light painted on light, in the sky,
on the ground and in the faces of those looking
not at you but through you, to the beckoning horizon,
to the pale night of a southern sapphire sky,
or even beneath you, through the dust of the endless earth,
to the dream-time in the mind’s eye of what has happened
and what is about to happen, even in the crowded cities,
even on the endless coast, even in the beautiful interior
desolations that never grew a single tree, we feel it when we hear
the growing whisper of rain feeding the parched ground,
or in the inward growth that makes what has been hidden
begin to show its face in the world, the unspoken sense,
not of being free now, but the anticipation of being allowed
into something deeper, further, beyond our living in the everyday,
into the beckoning endless land, into the blue-hilled horizon,
into the oceans mounting roar, an unspoken and indescribable freedom
just about to happen, reaching for the fatal shore, we ride
the slow, curling, but never breaking wave of our longed for arrival.
...
'Australia' © David Whyte 2015 and 2016
Walking the Shore Byron Bay,
Australia, April 25th 2016
Source: FB
The light has come to find you again,
even on the far side of the waking world,
look inland and you catch the dark interior
core of what only looks like an empty centre,
look outward and you see the tidal run
of ocean stretching forever from the shore
on which you stand, above all and across both,
newness and the unimaginably ancient, singing together,
and then everywhere, light painted on light, in the sky,
on the ground and in the faces of those looking
not at you but through you, to the beckoning horizon,
to the pale night of a southern sapphire sky,
or even beneath you, through the dust of the endless earth,
to the dream-time in the mind’s eye of what has happened
and what is about to happen, even in the crowded cities,
even on the endless coast, even in the beautiful interior
desolations that never grew a single tree, we feel it when we hear
the growing whisper of rain feeding the parched ground,
or in the inward growth that makes what has been hidden
begin to show its face in the world, the unspoken sense,
not of being free now, but the anticipation of being allowed
into something deeper, further, beyond our living in the everyday,
into the beckoning endless land, into the blue-hilled horizon,
into the oceans mounting roar, an unspoken and indescribable freedom
just about to happen, reaching for the fatal shore, we ride
the slow, curling, but never breaking wave of our longed for arrival.
...
'Australia' © David Whyte 2015 and 2016
Walking the Shore Byron Bay,
Australia, April 25th 2016
Source: FB
18 April 2020
14 April 2020
EFFERVESCENT MEMORIES
Like little bubbles of frozen thoughts
They float about in a sea of time
Full and plump at their birth
Withered and frail into oblivion
These are the memories of our lives
Treasured and stored for reflection
But left neglected they vanish
Forgotten and lost with time.
Once into the dark void they reach
No power can restore them
So keep your memories effervescent
And hold on to the true essence of you.
By Shadowlands
April 12. 2016
They float about in a sea of time
Full and plump at their birth
Withered and frail into oblivion
These are the memories of our lives
Treasured and stored for reflection
But left neglected they vanish
Forgotten and lost with time.
Once into the dark void they reach
No power can restore them
So keep your memories effervescent
And hold on to the true essence of you.
By Shadowlands
April 12. 2016
13 April 2020
THE WEATHER OF LOVE
Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
By Suzy Kassem,
(Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
By Suzy Kassem,
(Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
A MEDITATION OF A TRAVELER
by Rado Gatchalian
In my heart I found the stone
That shall make me bold and strong;
In here I come to my senses
Of my own brief life and death.
If I can travel from here to there
I shall reside to the depths of my heart.
As glimpse of light uncovers my contempt
Here in my shadow I shall resurrect.
If I shall be a brother to a cause
Let me unfold my breast for me to rise,
Like an empty child looking for his father
Each day becomes an oath to remember.
When time as profound as infinite sky
Asks me to choose between a slave and a master,
I shall pray solemnly that I find in myself
The full measurement of who we are.
And when this journey comes to an end:
Life and death, faith and wonder, all become one.
Source: The FILOsopher/10 April 2020
In my heart I found the stone
That shall make me bold and strong;
In here I come to my senses
Of my own brief life and death.
If I can travel from here to there
I shall reside to the depths of my heart.
As glimpse of light uncovers my contempt
Here in my shadow I shall resurrect.
If I shall be a brother to a cause
Let me unfold my breast for me to rise,
Like an empty child looking for his father
Each day becomes an oath to remember.
When time as profound as infinite sky
Asks me to choose between a slave and a master,
I shall pray solemnly that I find in myself
The full measurement of who we are.
And when this journey comes to an end:
Life and death, faith and wonder, all become one.
Source: The FILOsopher/10 April 2020
HELD, NOT HEALED
Stop trying to heal yourself, fix yourself,
even awaken yourself.
Stop trying to Fast-Forward the movie of your life.
Let go of 'letting go'.
Healing is not a destination.
Be here.
Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings,
your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes,
and they are not asking to be 'healed'.
They are asking to be held.
Here, now, lightly, in the loving,
healing arms of present awareness…
By Jeff Foster
even awaken yourself.
Stop trying to Fast-Forward the movie of your life.
Let go of 'letting go'.
Healing is not a destination.
Be here.
Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings,
your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes,
and they are not asking to be 'healed'.
They are asking to be held.
Here, now, lightly, in the loving,
healing arms of present awareness…
By Jeff Foster
DESCENT
I made a far journey
Earth's fair cities to view,
but like to love's city
City none I knew
At the first I knew not
That city's worth,
And turned in my folly
A wanderer on earth.
From so sweet a country
I must needs pass,
And like to cattle
Grazed on every grass.
As Moses' people
I would liefer eat
Garlic, than manna
And celestial meat.
What voice in this world
to my ear has come
Save the voice of love
Was a tapped drum.
Yet for that drum-tap
From the world of All
Into this perishing
Land I did fall.
That world a lone spirit
Inhabiting.
Like a snake I crept
Without foot or wing.
The wine that was laughter
And grace to sip
Like a rose I tasted
Without throat or lip.
'Spirit, go a journey,
' Love's voice said:
'Lo, a home of travail
I have made.'
Much, much I cried:
'I will not go';
Yea, and rent my raiment
And made great woe.
Even as now I shrink
To be gone from here,
Even so thence
To part I did fear.
'Spirit, go thy way,
' Love called again,
'And I shall be ever nigh thee
As they neck's vein.'
Much did love enchant me
And made much guile;
Love's guile and enchantment
Capture me the while.
In ignorance and folly
When my wings I spread,
From palace unto prison
I was swiftly sped.
Now I would tell
How thither thou mayst come;
But ah, my pen is broke
And I am dumb.
By Rumi
Translated by: A..J. Arberry
'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
Earth's fair cities to view,
but like to love's city
City none I knew
At the first I knew not
That city's worth,
And turned in my folly
A wanderer on earth.
From so sweet a country
I must needs pass,
And like to cattle
Grazed on every grass.
As Moses' people
I would liefer eat
Garlic, than manna
And celestial meat.
What voice in this world
to my ear has come
Save the voice of love
Was a tapped drum.
Yet for that drum-tap
From the world of All
Into this perishing
Land I did fall.
That world a lone spirit
Inhabiting.
Like a snake I crept
Without foot or wing.
The wine that was laughter
And grace to sip
Like a rose I tasted
Without throat or lip.
'Spirit, go a journey,
' Love's voice said:
'Lo, a home of travail
I have made.'
Much, much I cried:
'I will not go';
Yea, and rent my raiment
And made great woe.
Even as now I shrink
To be gone from here,
Even so thence
To part I did fear.
'Spirit, go thy way,
' Love called again,
'And I shall be ever nigh thee
As they neck's vein.'
Much did love enchant me
And made much guile;
Love's guile and enchantment
Capture me the while.
In ignorance and folly
When my wings I spread,
From palace unto prison
I was swiftly sped.
Now I would tell
How thither thou mayst come;
But ah, my pen is broke
And I am dumb.
By Rumi
Translated by: A..J. Arberry
'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972
PATIENCE
Patience is that characteristic
That allows a seed to wait,
Unruffled, unshaken until
Life swings open the golden gate.
Patience is that characteristic
That’s confident that time will yield,
That the season of drought will pass
And the skies will flood the field.
Patience is that characteristic
Where confidence rests within,
Content in the secret knowledge
That waiting is untouched by sin.
Patience is that characteristic
That winners wear on their crown
And while they may be tested often
They spring back whenever they’re down.
~ Raj Yogi
That allows a seed to wait,
Unruffled, unshaken until
Life swings open the golden gate.
Patience is that characteristic
That’s confident that time will yield,
That the season of drought will pass
And the skies will flood the field.
Patience is that characteristic
Where confidence rests within,
Content in the secret knowledge
That waiting is untouched by sin.
Patience is that characteristic
That winners wear on their crown
And while they may be tested often
They spring back whenever they’re down.
~ Raj Yogi
LET YOURSELF REST
If you’re exhausted, rest.
If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.
If you don’t feel the urge to make something new,
just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.
If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.
If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off.
If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.
If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today.
Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.
Time does not always need to be filled.
You are enough, simply in your being.
By Jeff Foster
If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.
If you don’t feel the urge to make something new,
just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.
If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.
If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off.
If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.
If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today.
Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.
Time does not always need to be filled.
You are enough, simply in your being.
By Jeff Foster
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