poem: remembering why I write (when words are slow to come)

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Herb Stone

poem: remembering why I write
(when words are slow to come)

on this journey
through the Cosmos
and beyond into
the Great Mystery

Life is beautiful
and holy whole
filled with stories
worthy of remembering

making sense
knowing meaning
finding purpose
fitting it all together

yes, writing down the bones
of this world, Self,
relationships, and community;
of our one wild and precious life

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
February 14, 2022

art: uncredited cover art to the book
The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by
Joseph Chilton Pearce

Author’s note: Quotes in my poem:
‘Writing Down the Bones’ is a book
by Natalie Goldberg, and ‘one wild and
precious life’ is from Mary Oliver’s
iconic poem ‘The Summer Day.’

Finding myself at an interstice in the
journey, words slow to come,
remembering why I write, and what
Annie Dillard wrote about “The gaps
are the spirit’s one home….Go up into
the gaps.” And so I go, writing it down.

poem: soliloquy on aging

Posted on February 12, 2022 by Herb Stone

poem: soliloquy on aging

lately finding myself
taking some time off, slowing down,
being quieter, more still,
disengaging from daily routines,
in need of a hae’lan

it has been a long, harsh winter,
worldly challenges of apocalyptic malaise,
the ever present change of
aging, illness, loss, relationships,
community, belonging

not a single thing but a whole thing
needing time to face, and including
my shadow, imperfections, dis-ease,
slowing it down, fitting it all together
forming a new gestalt of Life (and death)

beloveds, yearning for restoration and
re-engagement, from this exilic journey,
to a new complementary perfection,
of authentic wholeness and holiness,
belonging together in radical grace and love

Herb Stone
here&now working poetry
February 10, 2022

photo: writing at my desk

Reflection: On Being a Mystic in the Third Millennium

Posted on February 8, 2022 by Herb Stone

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

Reflection: On Being Present and in Conversation with Others

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Herb Stone

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