Kate Vogt's Blog, page 8

EARLY MORNING – Peaceful Benevolence

With Thy look of love
Thou didst
Leave in me
grace and beauty.

St. John of the Cross
Translated by Edgar Allison Peers

 

I love rising early.  The late-night noises and movements have faded.   And, before life stirrings begin anew, there is a sense of an all-pervading calm.  It feels like a prayerful pause when, if even momentarily, the quietude is all there is.

Within that moment of complete peacefulness, I both lose and gain a sense of beingness.  Like the nighttime noises, all the normal sen...

SKY – forever home

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner — what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

Rainer Maria Rilke

As a child, I felt the sky was home.  Life around me seemed to confirm this feeling.  The sky was predictably always there.  And, it seemed to hold and guide all that I experienced.  Even the adult conversation around me consistently referred to overhead happenings.  Thus,...

MIST

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
Trans. by Daniel Landinsky

 

The morning sky has been grey and misty this past week. People scurry along the sidewalks with their chins tucked into the fronts of their jackets. In the coffee shop, the conversations are about the gloomy weather, with wishes that it would get a little brighter.

Instead of feeling dreary, I feel...

FALL LIGHT – elemental meeting

I went everywhere with longing
in my eyes, until here
in my own house

I felt truth filling
my sight.

Lalla
Translated by Coleman Barks         

 

As I stepped outside the front door this morning, I was immediately reminded of the elemental liveliness of the fall season.  The length of daylight may be shorter and the skies may be cloudier, but the landscape felt joyfully vibrant.

The first rays of sunlight were freely pouring across the hillsides and onto the trees and rooftops.  It seemed that e...

WEB – glimmers of self

What has risen
from the tangled web of thought and sinew
now shines with jubilation
through the eyes of angels
and shouts of
Infinite existence
itself.

Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

It seems that everywhere there are signs of being in the heart of the fall season.  Besides the posters with reminders to vote in the upcoming election, there are goblins and ghosts appearing outside of homes in anticipation of upcoming Halloween.  The daytime light is shortening, the creek beds are dry, squirr...

MOUSE – unshakable humility

The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said ‘Little creature, form’d of joy and mirth,
Go, love without the help of anything on earth.’

William Blake

 

The fall season seems to offer new experiences.  Most recently, it was a rare sighting in our neighborhood.  We expect to see the deer eating the ivy, spiderwebs spanning across open spaces and squirrels hiding acorns.  In the fall there is an occasional family of wild turkeys walking along the street, yet our year-round rodents usually remain inv...

LAMB’S EAR – gentle presence

Touched by all that love is
I draw closer toward you
Saddened by all that love is
I run from you.
Surprised by all that love is
I remain alert in stillness.

František Halas

 

There, in the dirt, was an empty hole.  Just the day before, there had been a thriving plant commonly called lamb’s ear.  I looked at the hole, feeling sadness.  Across the continent and an there are holes that once were homes, places of worship and schools, not to mention the accompanying absence of humans, animals, and e...

PRE-DAWN ~ loving transition

Night is passing,
sun comes by dawn,
Awaken now, beauty’s essence,
heart of love.

Hakim Omar Khayyám
Translated by Nahid Angha, PhD

 

Most mornings I awaken into the near soundlessness of pre-dawn.  It feels like a generous pause, magically tucked between night and day.  There may be an occasional sound of leaves being rustled by the wind, but otherwise it is silent.  The nighttime calls of the local coyotes and owls have faded and left a silent opening to the first sounds of the day.

This sen...

LEAVES – endless community

We bloomed
in Spring.

Our bodies
are the leaves of God.

The apparent seasons of life and death
our eyes can suffer;

but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright:
they are God
Himself,

we will never perish
unless He
does.

St. Teresa of Avila

 

The morning air is cool and damp.  Scattered around the ground are fallen leaves.  They are mostly gathered in small mounds with a few solo ones spread in between.  Their groupings seem to mirror the patterns of the leaves on the overhead tree branc...

Trees – living essence

There’s a tree that existed before the woods,
in age twice as old.
Its roots suffered as the valley changed,
its leaves deformed by wind and frost.
People all laugh at its withered aspect,
caring nothing about the core’s beauty.
When the bark is all stripped off,
only essence remains.

Hanshan
Trans. by Tony Barnstone

 

This morning I was introduced to Lillie.  While the name might sound like a new app or clothing line, Lillie is something more rare—she is a lithe, 101-year old woman.  A tiny fr...