“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
― Rumi
The dance continues. Each day a new step and a new movement. One section comes to a close now and a new one starts with new themes. To fear the dance is to fear the endless stream of life and its constant change. To resist change is to resist the dance and to become stagnant for even when we stand still, the dance continues and we can either direct our movement or be pulled along helpless in its stream. When we participate, we get a say in what our steps are and may even control the dance for a bit or we can without care or fear allow the dance to take us wherever it may.
Blessings, G
“To be pagan and claim personal affront at the idea of Christmas more so than at Ramadan, Yom Kippur or any other Abrahamic or Eastern religion is not an indication of free thought. Indeed it indicates that one is still a slave to one’s upbringing.”
— Randall Wolfe
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the idea of holiday celebrating this past few weeks. I tend to find much about this time of year questionable. Roads and stores are crowded. People seem a good deal crankier and less likely to smile as they look for the perfect way to express to their loved ones in a material way how they want to be perceived as caring about them. People try hard to maintain their roles in each year’s extended family drama. Kids seem more anxious and stressed about what they are getting and whether they have lived up to some perceived standard of behaviour and will be thus rewarded. The list can go on and on and that doesn’t even touch on some of my religious objections.
I freely admit that I do not subscribe to the Jewish, Christian or Islamic faiths. If I had to describe my beliefs at all it would be as wildly eclectic with strong pagan and thelemic leanings. As most who read this blog know, when it comes to faith and universal understandings I have many many questions and relatively few answers. This is not from lack of knowledge of the different options out there, indeed I have studied many of the world’s religions in farther depths than most of their adherents. Thus the questions arise.
Still I try to find meaning in every day I am alive and I applaud others who do the same. If they do this by connecting within a cultural framework and it means something to them that is awesome. Thus I have no problem exchanging “Merry Christmases” or “Happy Chanukahs” or “Joyful Kwanzas” with those who celebrate and I do not trod on their traditions. It is not my business what anyone else chooses to believe and any reason is a good one to celebrate. I graciously accept presents as tokens that someone thought me worthy of their time and I give such tokens as I have because for some a gift at a particular time of year means “I love you too” in a language that they can understand. If this is hypocrisy than it is a small one that I can live with.
The Northern Hemisphere is about at Solstice. The time of least light and greatest darkness. Many cultures celebrate the return of the light and the progress of the seasons no matter what mythology they attach to it. I wish all a pleasant Yule and solstice and a wonderful re-manifestation out of the dark in whatever form it takes.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Lord of the Glade by G A Rosenberg
Drifting Through the Fractal Spaces by G A Rosenberg
Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
–Hermann Hesse
In silent moments
I hear the voice
full concepts erupt at once
problems that plagued me
during so called normal moments, solved
by the being within.
To say it is the real me
begs discussion of meaning
yet it feels so much more real
than the mirrored face I show
myself and the not me combined and resolved
who knows things
thinks things
understands things
at a level far beyond.
I need more silent moments
in which to become.
— G A Rosenberg
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Tonight I need to run with the stars
and leave this world behind
through work on my body
I’ll work on my soul
and find my orbit.
Free myself of the ties to this earth
Free myself of the daily grind
I’ll burn in the sky eternally
in my timeless race across the heavens
I will live in that stellar cup of bounty
and nevermore know need.
Shine on this night and know joy.
Run with me this night and know abandon.
— G A Rosenberg
“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.”
— William Blake
In imagination I go
where on Land I cannot
sailing through skies and beings
unfamiliar yet known to me
I can handle the paradox
and fold time in two
and lay it out
as a blanket
on which we will drink Saturn’s tea.
We may forget this sojourn
for I always dip in Lethe fore I go
so each timeless time is new
Still I long for the day
when I shall remain
when the real imagines itself
— G A Rosenberg
“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost
Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a situation (whether it be friendship, job or romantic entanglement) that you knew was not going to work and that you did not want to be there no matter what and you just wished that you could back out of it gracefully? Unfortunately in those types of situations (life lessons from the universe) it is impossible to leave without entangling oneself deeper. This has happened to me many times. Each time I saw it as a ride, an attraction that I bought the ticket for and paid the only coin we really have for life experience, my attention and so I might as well enjoy it. Like any amusement park ride I knew that it would be of limited duration and that eventually it would come to an end and I could go on knowing that having experienced it once, I need never do so again. At least I wouldn’t have to experience that particular ride. Life tho is a series of overlapping rides some of which we enjoy, some of which make us nauseous. We see them through. We just have to remember to hold on tight and wait for them to end.
Blessings, G
Click on image to see full-sized:
Quetzalcoatl Study by G A Rosenberg
Rising Together in Twilight’s Hall by G A Rosenberg
“We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility.
…You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.”
~ Lyall Watson
In the space between
wakefulness and sleep
I let myself drift into silence
the echoes of the day receding
In the space between moments
my mind journeys
as I seek the silent void
from which the new emerges
In the space between actions
I seek stillness
and respite from the moving day.
— G A Rosenberg
The pace of life increases. It seems we all become so busy trying to fill the unforgiving moment with sixty seconds worth of distance run (as Kipling put it) that we forget that it is the silence in between actions that recharges us. New ideas and awakenings come from that silence and we wilt if we don’t get enough of it. Yet still the hamster wheel races on and all too often we find ourselves doing two or three things at once and if an empty moment comes along, we fill the void rather than open to silence.
Blessings, G
“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
The Moon edges towards full. Wind knocks everything askew. They represent my overpowering emotions and scattered thoughts. A cat gives birth to three kittens, one of them unfortunately still-born. Too bad some of my ideas never make it past the point of expression. I offer a white flower as the only thing that I could find as beautiful as her innocence. It starts to rain as the sky expresses the sadness I keep buried within. I see a star fall and I feel hope.
The sun rises and I know it will all be better.
Blessings, G
Expanded Awareness (Redux) by G A Rosenberg 
State of Grace by G A Rosenberg 
Buer by G A Rosenberg 
Systems Theory by G A Rosenberg 
Lord of the Glade by G A Rosenberg 
Drifting Through the Fractal Spaces by G A Rosenberg 
Beast Master (Camio) by G A Rosenberg 
The Dancer Within by G A Rosenberg 
Born of the Flames by G A Rosenberg 
Exertion by G A Rosenberg 
Lizard Art (Redux) by G A Rosenberg 
Dancing at Time’s End by G A Rosenberg 
Oriax by G A Rosenberg 
Quetzalcoatl Study by G A Rosenberg 
Rising Together in Twilight’s Hall by G A Rosenberg 
The Burning Towers (Malphas) by G A Rosenberg 
Manifesting Will by G A Rosenberg 
Resolving by G A Rosenberg 
Streaming Ideas in His Wake by G A Rosenberg