WORK IN PROGRESS. Part 4 of "Messages from the Edge". Stay with me. What have we lost in 32,000 years that we had when we painted those magical animals? What have we sacrificed of our humanity as we gorged on the fruit of the forbidden tree? And can we retrieve it?
WORK IN PROGRESS. Part 4 of "Messages from the Edge". Stay with me. What have we lost in 32,000 years that we had when we painted those magical animals? What have we sacrificed of our humanity as we gorged on the fruit of the forbidden tree? And can we retrieve it?
WORK IN PROGRESS. Part 4 of "Messages from the Edge". Stay with me. What have we lost in 32,000 years that we had when we painted those magical animals? What have we sacrificed of our humanity as we gorged on the fruit of the forbidden tree? And can we retrieve it?
Weve found a way to amuse our fingers And abuse our minds A trip into the unknown known Where everything exists And people we never heard of Tell us things we have no need to know About a world we never knew existed It frees us and enslaves us This truth that lies deep down inside That everything exists for us to find Lies we believe because weve looked for them They warned us about this This fruit of the Tree of Knowledge That bites back Leaving us hungry always wanting more We knew a thing or two back then We wrote the book Our Stone-Age minds programmed to lift the stone And find underneath another stone Just waiting to be lifted A perilous descent into the void The game was on Nothing could stop us now We had the taste for it This thirst for more than data For the knowing not the knowledge For the seeking not the finding For always looking further than there is Drunk with the thirst for thirst For the unknown thing just round the corner Underneath the stone Out of control On a roll Thrilled by the prospect of collision That might release the one thing we are seeking That stops us in our tracks A definitive confrontation with ourselves
But this is only a blip isnt it
For THIRTY-TWO-THOUSAND YEARS AGO Our genius ancestors Were throwing us a link to the sublime The world they knew Our world Filled with transcendent grace Unimaginable beauty Magical animals That rambled through their lives And gave them meaning These people are US And we are them What happened to us That we so lost the thread Betrayed our race Distorted our humanity How to recapture Our birthright Our family The creatures of our world Who shared our pain Astonished us with their abundant life And blessed us by their presence? How did we so fall from Grace And shrivel into what we have become?
If I believe what you tell me
I give you power
If only for a moment If I do not believe it I empower myself And take your power away If only momentarily If I believe you sometimes I retain the power of judgement And diminish your authority But not always If I believe nothing you tell me I am calling you a liar And increase my self-esteem By judging you If I always believe everything you tell me You are my parent or my teacher And I am very young Or very stupid If I am not very young And still believe everything you tell me always I have lost the capacity for rational thought And need to give you power By making myself stupid If I am not very young or very stupid And still believe everything you tell me However improbable Unlikely Or impossible it seems I have relinquished what intelligence remained to me And have made you into a GOD Because I need to worship someone Or something Irrational That cannot be explained Or believed This makes me happy.
OK Ive made you into a God
So now what happens?
You have to find me a name I suppose . . .
Cant I just call you Fred? Its not very Godlike . . . But it is your name . . . Yes . . . So now I can worship you? I dont know. There may be other considerations . . . Like . . . ? Im not sure Im qualified to be a God . . . But if I worship you isnt that enough? It depends what you want . . . Just the usual stuff remission of sins and so forth . . . Have you got any sins to remit? Of course. We all have sins dont we? Such as . . . ? Let me think. Hostility. Aggression. Impure thoughts. That sort of thing. But have you actually DONE anything? Committed a crime for example? Of course I have! Im sure I have. I just cant think of one at the moment. Well let me know if you do and well see what can be done. And in the meantime I can keep on worshipping you? I suppose so. THANKYOU! You see? You just needed to believe in yourself . . .
Its not the suffering that warps us
Its the addiction The fiddling with the scar
The exploration of the wound with grubby fingers
Embedded in the hole we keep on digging Deeper and deeper Seeking the truth about ourselves Groaning and sleepless into the pain we go Following the WHY Lured on by the spectre of an answer To dig the bullet out that caused the wound But supposing there is no bullet Suppose at the bottom of the hole We find a note I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT ME How do we handle that How do we fill the gap left by our anguish The Holy Hole The Sanctum Sanctorum that we venerate Empty and aching to be filled We fill it with the suffering of others For now we have the skills Forensic tools to explore known territory To further the investigation The game is on again Were good at this Our hole is filled once more And we are almost happy Weve found a meaning to our lives But are we not free to leave? The door is open Why cant we get out? What is it we love about the pain That we must shut the door against a radiance That cauterizes like a flame of light Healing and cleansing Giving and forgiving As only Nature can Whats the ferocious charm of guilt That we so cling to it?
THE ASTONISHING FLUKE WE SEE EVERY
DAY AND TAKE FOR GRANTED
The Sun happens to be 400 times larger
than the Moon And happens to be 400 times further away from the Earth So that the Sun and the Moon appear the same size to us Coincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous Einstein
The day I beat my man at chess I never played again
My heart which should have leapt with joy shrunk with sudden pain I sensed a marked strategic loss where should have been a gain
I didnt mean to do it and it cast me into limbo
For he was a chess champion and I was just a bimbo So to keep my husband happy and contented as before I took to losing battles so that he could win the war But that was many years ago and things have changed since then I no longer have a husband or a need to pamper men And feel no need to demonstrate that I have got a brain For the strategy of losing has proved a major gain I discovered intuition had a potent inner core And the boundaries of consciousness were greater than before My world was now much larger than the world you find in books For a formal education is more formal than it looks So glowing with contentment I played some games for fun And much to my astonishment discovered that I won A unforeseen sensation invaded me inside An increase in self confidence of smug contented pride Good Lord I thought Ive cracked it Ive found out how to win With just a bit of practise theyll never know Im dim But then I had the same response as I had felt before A shrinking of capacity where I had looked for more For this new world was pitiless was narrow and unfeeling No crazy sense of empathy no shared delight in healing And the boundaries of consciousness had shrunk again to this If I get it right I win it if I get it wrong I miss I still play silly games of course as often as I choose But with this subtle difference I dont care if I lose Our lives have hidden strategies not always of our choosing And it seems I had discovered the Strategic Art of Losing.
Silence at Noon Older than knowing or unknowing This held breath
Tells us that we are mortal
That we are sacred The answer to no known question Silence at Noon Nails us down senseless Uncomprehending A sacrament in another language Beyond our grasp Dense with meaning With implications for our dwindled state We can no longer hear Silence at Noon We know not who we are Or why Understanding has left us The tide gone out And we are stranded Unfinished Incomplete Swamped by Eternity Silence at Noon Unpeopled streets and empty skies A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf But nothing moves Silence at Noon For seven hundred years the Angelus bell Flooded the fields and woods Lifting the labourers face to heaven Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed And now we live in a secular age This elemental energy holds us still For no-one has told the birds that God is dead.
Put a white coat on WHY and you found a religion
Give him a clipboard and let him make lists
Let him attempt to describe the indescribable Penetrate the impenetrable And ask unanswerable questions Then give him money Letters after his name Staff in white coats with letters after their names And large buildings to worship in Invent new instruments to investigate the WHY To tear its wings off Penetrate its pounding heart Eavesdrop on its intimate parts And discover the astounding language of its soul Then let him invent a language of his own A sacred tongue acquired painfully Through long and arduous processes Procedures stained with smelly substances That make no sense And let these barbarous sounds be elevated Given magic properties and special numbers To increase their supernatural qualities And enhance their glamour You are well on the way to founding a religion By now the WHY has many followers Eager to join the throng To sacrifice themselves in its blessed name Many will die in this great vocation Scurrying for letters after their names But many will win prizes Their fame attracting others to the cause A life of devotion and white-coated sacrifice To sacred worship of the holy WHY And everyone will believe what they say Hallelujah!
A poet knows that the bottom line
Is where the Truth dwells Just as the banker knows Thats where it lies
It is the payoff after all
The twist in the tail The moment of truth Even when it lies Both know you can tell a story Weave a legend Hoist a sail and embark for a land of dreams As long as the bottom line is what it seems In Shakepeares time the bottom line was a couplet Which targeted your soul precisely Which only goes to show that a handsome man in a doublet Could sum things up nicely The bottom line has more power than you think And its message is sometimes darker The problem being that however cleverly you approach it You end up sounding like Dorothy Parker