Category Archives: God of the Cosmos

an Advent poem: making ready (what comes before)

Posted on by
Reply
an Advent poem:
making ready
(what comes before)

sitting in the pre-dawn
darkness of this spiritually
transformative season

silent, reflective, open,
to the Divine Truth within
and the new beginnings before us

witnessing the Universal Cosmic Christ
who came down to us, comes again,
and is always with us in eternal life

mindful of the season’s
sentimentality, nostalgia, and hubris
which comforts and distracts us

here and now in the bliss
of participating and being
in the way of Creator God of All

mutually committed in body/mind/spirit
to preparing the way and living together
in diversity, healing, and peace

we humans transformed and co-creating
the alternative neighborly community
of True Self and Authentic Belonging

a lone voice in the wilderness
crying out, make ready the way
for the in-flowing of the Great I Am

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
December 6, 2022

author’s note: The last stanza is a paraphrase of the prophet Isaiah from the old testament found in Isaiah 40:3. The Great I Am reverences the I Am statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John, and Yahweh, God’s name in the Old Testament. It also connotes the Sanskrit mantra Tat Tvam Asi from the Chandogya Upanishad which refers to the unity of the individual Soul with the Divine Universal Consciousness. My experience is that all Divine Truth is universal, perennial, and cosmic flowing from the one supreme source which underlies all religion, spirituality, and mysticism, and which can be directly experienced by human beings who follow the way of True Self. An excellent book on this idea is “The Perennial Philosophy” by Aldous Huxley.

art image ‘O Root’ by Sister Ansgar Holmberg

poem: child of the universe, hippie, yogi, elder

Posted on by
Reply
poem: child of the universe,
hippie, yogi, elderneither clinging to a nostalgic past,
nor projecting a future of sentimentality,
now resisting social norms of
emotional idealism and neurotypical
stereotyping

I, being a witness of here and now,
maintaining spiritual consciousness,
invitational presence, and attentive
mutuality, connecting deeply at soul level,
opening to the wholeness of other

we, belonging here together in beloved
community, falling upward in grace and love,
cycling through the bardo, eternally together
with the supreme in cosmic union,
that am I (tat tvam asi)

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry

August 28, 2022

photo by author

“Here is, in truth, the whole secret of
Yoga, the science of the soul. The active
turnings, the strident vibrations, of
selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled
by meditation, by letting heart and mind
dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the
heart to the strong, silent life above, which
rests in the stillness of eternal love, and
needs no harsh vibration to convince it of
true being.”- Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali

“The Perennial Philosophy is expressed
most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula,
tat tvam asi (‘That art thou’); the Atman,
or immanent eternal Self, is one with
Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all
existence; and the last end of every human
being, is to discover the fact for himself, to
find out who he really is.” – Aldous Huxley

“It is only those who are in constant revolt
that discover what is true, not the man who
conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only
when you are constantly inquiring, constantly
observing, constantly learning, that you find
truth, God, or love.”- Jiddu Krishnamurti

poem: a Lenten blessing for personal and relational transformation for all

Posted on by
Reply
poem: a Lenten blessing for personal
and relational transformation for all

in some shadowy Lenten corner of our
desert hearts, may we face all of our
small self-serving definitions of Creator God,
and the idols we erect and worship
of our hubris, conceit, and sentimentality

liberating our self from this wilderness,
following the Way of the Cross, as did Jesus,
the Universal Cosmic Christ, and resurrecting
into a more authentic becoming
with the Spirit

Creator God’s grace and love universally and
unconditionally given cannot sustain New Life
in an arid heart and wilderness mind,
the vine dies and fails to produce the
communal Fruit of Life

may the Divine Creator be the lotus flower
upon the throne of our heart chakra,
om manni padme hum, manifesting love,
grace, kindness, and compassion
to every corner of the Cosmos

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
March 9, 2022

images
Lotus heart chakra – unattributed
Open your heart, Paschima Namaskarasana,
Reverse Prayer Hands – unattributed

Fat Tuesday gives way to Ash Wednesday

Posted on by
Reply

Fat Tuesday gives way to Ash Wednesday

the clown of yesterday’s revelry
finds their self alone
in their shadowy desert cell
light flooding in and a jug of water

nothing to do but to be with one’s self
giving up the distractions
and fasting from excess, reflecting deeply
our relationship with Cosmic God

confessing our human hubris, conceit,
and sentimentality, repenting those things
that separate us from God, and reconciling
with God, the Cosmos, and all God’s beloved

knowing the trials to come
dying to ourselves
resurrecting in the New Life
radical grace and love abounding

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
March 2, 2022

Author’s note: I originally wrote this poem
on Ash Wednesday 2018 and have republished
slight variations of it since. The version above
is its third rendition.

Art by Carl Spitzweg, ‘Ash Wednesday’

Reflection: On Being a Mystic in the Third Millennium

Posted on by
Reply

Reflection: On Being a Mystic in the Third Millennium

“Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?”-Rumi

Dorothy Soelle uses Rumi’s quote above as the introductory quote in her 2001 book ‘The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance.’ She goes on to write that two of those prisons for her were the German protestant church and the academic theology of the post-Enlightenment.

She elucidates this as follows: “….I can simply say that what I want to live, understand, and make known is the love for God.” She says that God’s love for us and our love for God must be mutual, and that mysticism best expresses this mutuality between God and humans and advances the Beloved community of radical grace and radical love.

Beloveds, let us here and now love one another in, with, and through the Universal God of All!

Note: Ms. Soelle lived in Cologne, Germany, born 1929, died 2003.

Art ‘Rosa Mystica’ by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

tanka: glory of heavenly and earthly bodies

Posted on by
Reply
tanka: glory of heavenly
and earthly bodiesheavenly bodies
and earthly bodies in glory
glory of the sun
and another of the moon
and each star their own glory

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
February 2, 2022

Author’s note: The photo is
my own and was taken as the
sun was rising on the eastern
horizon at 6:09 AM on Sunday,
January 30, 2022 at Nashville,
Tennessee. Also visible is
the planet Venus and the waning
crescent moon. My tanka poem
is inspired by 1 Corinthians 15
in which Paul the apostle explains
to the early church in Corinthia the
resurrection of the body of Christ
from the dead. He speaks of the
different types of bodies, each in
their own glory, including earthly
and heavenly bodies and physical
and spiritual bodies.

Reflection: On Being Present and in Conversation with Others

Posted on by
Reply

Reflection: On Being Present and in Conversation with Others

My (an old man approaching his 74th. birthday) most
fond wish and deepest passion is the Communion of Souls
brought to bear through our right action of mindfulness, intention,
purpose, discipline, and practice. And grounded in True Self,
Authenticity, Mutuality, and Belonging together in Communities.
Dear Beloveds, may we awaken, personally do the
work, and collectively join together in the unitive experience of
the Divine Ground, Radical Grace, and Radical Love.
– Herb Stone, poet and author @herbstonejr.com

Let us consider this plea in its perennial expression of our sisters and brothers:

“For a lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness evade us everyday.”
– Evelyn Underhill, Mystics

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible.
To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple,
obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”
– Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

“The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute,
ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances)
susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being.
This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical
phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who areprepared to “Die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

“We expect a theophany of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called
community.” -Martin Buber, Between Man and Man