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Imagine the unimaginable!
Born to be a villain
A cruel heartless monster
A stirrer of hate, division and despair
An executioner of lives, cold, and unfeeling
A murderer.
To be used in the service of destroying the old to usher in the new.
To be known through eternity as a devil, evil through and through.
I know. Imagine that!
And then imagine the unimaginable.
That you were born to be a resister
A champion of the least loved
A friend to the forelorn
An advocate for justice and freedom
A lover of life
To be used in the eternal conflict between good and evil
To be perhaps forgotten through eternity
Your name never known but never cursed.
Embrace your destiny.
Know deeply who you were born to be
And do what must be done.
Silvia Behrend 11/25
Born to be a villain
A cruel heartless monster
A stirrer of hate, division and despair
An executioner of lives, cold, and unfeeling
A murderer.
To be used in the service of destroying the old to usher in the new.
To be known through eternity as a devil, evil through and through.
I know. Imagine that!
And then imagine the unimaginable.
That you were born to be a resister
A champion of the least loved
A friend to the forelorn
An advocate for justice and freedom
A lover of life
To be used in the eternal conflict between good and evil
To be perhaps forgotten through eternity
Your name never known but never cursed.
Embrace your destiny.
Know deeply who you were born to be
And do what must be done.
Silvia Behrend 11/25
- Published on
The full moon slid into my sleep early this morning.
She said: Wake up.
The stars are still whirling in space
Countless suns exploding with energy and light.
It is still now
But know that the heavens open and close
Like a heartbeat
Contraction, expansion
One follows upon the other.
Creation never ceases.
Suffering ends.
Joy awakens.
In a continuous cycle of life.
She said:
Live.
She said: Wake up.
The stars are still whirling in space
Countless suns exploding with energy and light.
It is still now
But know that the heavens open and close
Like a heartbeat
Contraction, expansion
One follows upon the other.
Creation never ceases.
Suffering ends.
Joy awakens.
In a continuous cycle of life.
She said:
Live.
- Published on
Through the transformational fire: Glass and Soul
I dreamt I was making glass beads last night, again.
I loved the process, both in the studio and in the inner world.
I love:
How glass rods turn into bright liquid in the torch
The molten glass, like honey, coalesces into balls of color
Any movement from true center, any distraction, and the center shifts
The glass moves to the side and then the exquisite recalibration begins.
Did you know that glass wants to be round?
Do you know that our souls long for expression?
It is a collaboration among the glass, the rod which holds it and extreme heat.
And me.
The delicate dance of taking a solid into a molten state (I have burn marks)
Shifting gravity, carefully adding elements, calculating coefficients
(you cannot combine 104 with borosilicate)
It is a mystery, really.
Glass wants to be round.
Soul longs to be expressed.
Then, when the bead is finished, when the marks of the cold smasher is smoothed over
By air drying in a lower flame
Then, comes the slow cooling off period.
Inserting the bead in the 950 degree kiln
More heat to temper the glass
Which has already gone through many firings
From sand and minerals and fierce heat to a solid rod
To a molten liquid
Again to a solid
When cooled to perfection, annealed, made strong as not to break
The mystery reveals a beauty beyond compare.
Did you know that glass and soul want to become what they are?
I dreamt I was making glass beads last night, again.
I loved the process, both in the studio and in the inner world.
I love:
How glass rods turn into bright liquid in the torch
The molten glass, like honey, coalesces into balls of color
Any movement from true center, any distraction, and the center shifts
The glass moves to the side and then the exquisite recalibration begins.
Did you know that glass wants to be round?
Do you know that our souls long for expression?
It is a collaboration among the glass, the rod which holds it and extreme heat.
And me.
The delicate dance of taking a solid into a molten state (I have burn marks)
Shifting gravity, carefully adding elements, calculating coefficients
(you cannot combine 104 with borosilicate)
It is a mystery, really.
Glass wants to be round.
Soul longs to be expressed.
Then, when the bead is finished, when the marks of the cold smasher is smoothed over
By air drying in a lower flame
Then, comes the slow cooling off period.
Inserting the bead in the 950 degree kiln
More heat to temper the glass
Which has already gone through many firings
From sand and minerals and fierce heat to a solid rod
To a molten liquid
Again to a solid
When cooled to perfection, annealed, made strong as not to break
The mystery reveals a beauty beyond compare.
Did you know that glass and soul want to become what they are?
- Published on
Saying Yes to the Unreasonable
In today's world, we are faced with irrational and unreasonable events, this is a reflection based on the Annunciation of Mary, because, while it is not Christmas, transformation is an ongoing event.
After Annunciation
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.
Madeline L’Engle
What a multitude of miracles we may have missed throughout our lives, filled as we are, with good reasons for doing or not doing. There is a certain elegance about those lines, “had Mary been filled with reason” that strike at the core of our human experience. We want to know, to make order and sense, to tidy the world into boxes that will not tumble or fall. In an effort to stay safe in the familiar, we populate our inner life with shoulds, oughts and musts, or, in some cases, must nots.
This is all true. Yet there is a deeper wisdom to be gleaned from these words. Had Mary been filled with reason, that is, filled with the conscious effort to order the world, there would not have been space for Logos, the ordering spirit of the divine. That is a powerful image for those of us who seek to understand the movements of the holy in our lives. And by the holy, I am not speaking of the gods and goddesses we have named that clothe the ineffable, but of the numinous mystery itself.
I am reminded of the statue of Shiva Nataraja, the Hindu Lord of the Dance, dancing on the back of a supine human. All along, we are looking at our human concerns, belly button gazing at the lint of life lived small, when above us, around us, dances the divine magnificent presence. When we fill our minds with the effort to understand what is not explicable, we close off the opportunity to experience the miracle of being awakened to a new state of awareness. The reason is simple: we are terrified of taking up the mandate of what the holy calls us to become.
It wasn’t easy for a young woman to submit her will to that of the unknowable, to risk being transformed from an adolescent into a woman who would bear the burden of birthing a life destined to death. Forget the resurrection, at that moment of saying yes to the irrational, the unreasonable, she was saying yes to the process of being transformed, broken and broken open. Madonna and Mater Dolorosa, Virgin and Weeping Mother, what immeasurable joy and suffering are there contained!
There are a million reasons to deny the call of the holy, of our unique destinies-loss of family, reputation, safety, loss of our familiar and comforting spot in the world. There is no good reason to submit to the mystery that would ask the world of us, take it away and then give it back transformed. Except that, to follow reason only robs us of the unique gift living our lives imbued with the Spirit of our lives. So much more can be said about Mary, about this poem, about the masculine and feminine worlds. But for now, hush, listen and perhaps the lily will bend to your ear and whisper the words meant only for you.
In today's world, we are faced with irrational and unreasonable events, this is a reflection based on the Annunciation of Mary, because, while it is not Christmas, transformation is an ongoing event.
After Annunciation
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.
Madeline L’Engle
What a multitude of miracles we may have missed throughout our lives, filled as we are, with good reasons for doing or not doing. There is a certain elegance about those lines, “had Mary been filled with reason” that strike at the core of our human experience. We want to know, to make order and sense, to tidy the world into boxes that will not tumble or fall. In an effort to stay safe in the familiar, we populate our inner life with shoulds, oughts and musts, or, in some cases, must nots.
This is all true. Yet there is a deeper wisdom to be gleaned from these words. Had Mary been filled with reason, that is, filled with the conscious effort to order the world, there would not have been space for Logos, the ordering spirit of the divine. That is a powerful image for those of us who seek to understand the movements of the holy in our lives. And by the holy, I am not speaking of the gods and goddesses we have named that clothe the ineffable, but of the numinous mystery itself.
I am reminded of the statue of Shiva Nataraja, the Hindu Lord of the Dance, dancing on the back of a supine human. All along, we are looking at our human concerns, belly button gazing at the lint of life lived small, when above us, around us, dances the divine magnificent presence. When we fill our minds with the effort to understand what is not explicable, we close off the opportunity to experience the miracle of being awakened to a new state of awareness. The reason is simple: we are terrified of taking up the mandate of what the holy calls us to become.
It wasn’t easy for a young woman to submit her will to that of the unknowable, to risk being transformed from an adolescent into a woman who would bear the burden of birthing a life destined to death. Forget the resurrection, at that moment of saying yes to the irrational, the unreasonable, she was saying yes to the process of being transformed, broken and broken open. Madonna and Mater Dolorosa, Virgin and Weeping Mother, what immeasurable joy and suffering are there contained!
There are a million reasons to deny the call of the holy, of our unique destinies-loss of family, reputation, safety, loss of our familiar and comforting spot in the world. There is no good reason to submit to the mystery that would ask the world of us, take it away and then give it back transformed. Except that, to follow reason only robs us of the unique gift living our lives imbued with the Spirit of our lives. So much more can be said about Mary, about this poem, about the masculine and feminine worlds. But for now, hush, listen and perhaps the lily will bend to your ear and whisper the words meant only for you.
- Published on