Kate Vogt's Blog, page 13

Rain – an invitation to wholeness

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Tukaram

It was a rainy day.  My impulse was to hibernate, but a glance out the window inspired me to instead go out for a walk.  Other species had yet to take cover so I took a cue to join them.  A few sparrows hopped around on the deck, crows were flying around and a deer was calmly eating the new growth of ivy on the nearby hillside.  Raindrops glistened like jewels on the tree branches and overhead wires.

I couldnt help but laugh at my human leeriness of getting wet.  A few...

Eternal Love

What

Is the

Root of all these

Words?

One thing: love.

But a love so deep and sweet

It needed to express itself  

With scents, sounds, colors

That never before

Existed.

Hafiz

I watched a deer as it appeared on the hillside outside our apartment’s sliding glass doors.   Grassy threads dangled from its antlers, giving it the appearance of having been adorned with jewels of the earth.  For the past ten days it has regularly come to the same spot, just to stand and watch Jay and me as we go throug...

Golden Light

If God
invited you to a party and
said,

“Everyone in the ballroom tonight will
be my special

how would you then treat them when you arrived?

Indeed, indeed!

And Hafiz knows that there is no one in
this world who is not standing upon

His jeweled dance
floor.

Hafiz

The trunk glistened on what was otherwise a modest redwood tree.  Some of its branches were filled with greenery reaching upward and others were bare, slopping downward.  Its bark was a little greyer than some of its neighbors, but ...

Hallowed Life

The weight of arrogance is such
that no bird can fly
carrying it.
And the man who feels superior
to others, that man
cannot dance,
the real dance when the soul takes God
into its arms and you both fall
onto your knees in gratitude,

a blessed gratitude
for life.  

St. John of the Cross

The weight of arrogance is such that no bird can fly carrying it. And the man who feels superior to others, that man cannot dance, the real dance when the soul takes God into its arms and you both fall onto your ...

Fall Morning

It is there
that our hearts are set,  

In the expanse
of the heavens.   

Pawnee Wisdom

Outside the open bedroom window, the sound of birds escorting another day into being.  Even before the had light arrived, new sounds accompanied the melodic chirps and warbles.  There were the familiar signals that it was a Tuesday, with the clanking of the lids of the trash bins as the garbage workers made their way up the street.  For a short while, there was the scratching sound of a metal rake against ce...

Boulders

I am the Mother
of fair love…
and of knowledge,
and of hope.
In me is grace
of the way and of the truth…
My memory is
unto everlasting generations.

Book of Ecclesiasticus

The rising full moon loomed over the boulders at one end of a nearby beach.   On the opposite end, the sun was disappearing behind a cloudbank.  Every grain of sand and atmospheric particle seemed aglow, as though promising to carry forward the memory of light into the nighttime. 

A golden warm hue caressed the crevices of...

WIND OF LIFE

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The great sea has set me in motion,
set me adrift,
moving me like a weed in a river.

The sky and the strong wind
have moved the spirit inside me
till I am carried away
trembling with joy.

Uvavnuk
Netsilik Inuit

Wind everywhere.  Smoke rode the invisible currents across the land to the east.  Gales spiraled across the waters to the south, making their way toward landfall and then to the north and east.  Across the airwaves, voices rose with blame. 

Within hospitals around the world, ventilator...

Begonia – opening to gratitude

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind I was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along. 

Rumi

Here in the northern hemisphere there are signs of the upcoming fall season, especially in colors across the hillsides. The squirrels have been more visible as they scurry along near bare branches.  Neighborhood hydrangeas are fading and persimmons, grapes, and pomegranates are finishing their final ripening.    

In the ...

THUNDER – inviting loving attentiveness

The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul the way that light
rushes into a transparent object. 
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
itself; so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.  
And the more souls who resonate together,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.

Dante

The stillness of the night melted into slow, drawn out rumbling.  In the haze of my sleepiness, my mind registered it as a sonic boom.  When the sound...

LOVE – seeing beyond preconceptions

But love of God
hath so absorbed me
that neither love
nor hate
of any other thing
remains in my heart. 

Rābiʻa

Yesterday was a foggy summer morning.  The air had taken on form and texture.  Like a freshly painted canvas, it was heavy and wet with soft, silvery hues.  A subtle radiance seeped through the thinner layers of the fog, revealing the presence of light.

While in many ways this was a typical coastal California foggy day, it felt instead almost hallowed   A tranquil, loving gentlen...