Tag / Thoughts

by J M Greff

Beloved, Mine,

 

spiritual_gate_by_Patrick_Flies.jpg

Beloved, mine,
The days fly
off their spool
like a delicate tapestry
woven from time
that unravels
while sleeping.
Upon waking,
the approaching sun
reveals you there beside me.
I feel a quickening of my soul,
a transcendent drive
to consummate ecstatic union.
I reach out to you
and find you reaching back to me
with delicate hands
and soft touch.
Our lips press.
Our hands caress.
Our bodies entwine.
I enter with intention,
complete in your embrace,
and fall into your eyes.
With every press,
every stroke,
every shared breath,
we reach ever higher.
Our sounds,
like the Song of the Universe,
rise to the Heavens
as the heady scent of us,
like incense,
drifts beyond the atmosphere,
carried by cries of passion
that commune with the Divine.

I turn myself inward,
to see you from within,
and find you looking back at me.
Through your eyes
I see eternity.

We are One.

 

Image: “Spiritual Gate” by Patrick Flies

by J M Greff

Smile

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I’m not sure when I scribbled this poem on a loose sheaf of note paper (now in the “Final” file along with empty cans and banana peals as all illegible scribbles later clarified end) that suggests there was at one time more to it. Still, it stands on it’s own as a contemplative piece.

Smile

Fall
Through memory
Catching on the web of it
Hurtling through the thick of it

Down
In to the past
Hanged on every word of it
Passing through the heart of it

Hurt
By the act
Bleeding with the pain of it
Shooting past that part of it
To someplace better

sometimes
I find
that stepping to the side
of the ongoing ride
to watch it rolling by
while I
frozen in a space
about the size of nothing
and staring
at the slowly melting something
leaving just the core
while the unreality of it all
falls away
just makes me want to smile

 

 

Image: “Orion” by Liu Yu

by J M Greff

3:33

333

It’s 3:33 am. The witching hour.

There’s a lot of nonsense that goes along with numbers. Especially repeating numbers. Among the nonsense are some very few truths.

Truth #1 – 3:33 am is too damn early to wake up – I don’t care who or where you are, this, I believe, comes as close to a universal truth as I can imagine. Right next to “stubbing your barefoot toe on a raised piece of sidewalk sucks ass”.

Truth #2 – 3:33 am is the witching hour – This truth is best taken with a grain of salt or, if you have high blood pressure, with a graham cracker and a glass of goat milk – Historically, it is the time when the veil between worlds is the thinnest. When dreams are best shared or traveled. When the spirits of other planes are most easily contacted. Don’t ask me why this is, I have never found a reasonable explanation, but it is the time when most serious occultists do their most serious work. It’s when I do my own work, like this piece, and other… stuff.

Truth #3 – Waking at specific times or noticing specific times when glancing at a clock is a way for the subconscious (read: NOT angels) to pass messages to the conscious. We make connections to these inferences and interpretations in our waking hours and our subconscious, which is a far better keeper of time than we give it credit for, tells us, “Hey, Nimrod, look at the clock. It’s 11:11. Time for a change. Maybe get off yer ass and follow through on your workout goal or something useful, eh?”

I get that number a lot.

So here it is, 3:33 am, or it was when I first woke anyway, now it’s like 5:20, which is 4:20 somewhere, which is a whole different number, and to be honest I’m a little confused because I have never (consciously) agreed on the meaning of 3:33 so I have no idea what message my subconscious is sending me except this: It’s too damn early.

 

And now it’s too late to go back to bed… maybe it is witches.

 

by J M Greff

Balance

effervescent.by.Christina.Rivera.jpg

Today is the Autumn Equinox. Day and night are of equal length for a few days and then the days will become shorter.

It is the time of harvest. When we reap what we have sown and labored so hard to produce. It is a time of harmony and balance. When everything is exactly as it is supposed to be.

Seeing that balance isn’t always easy so I’m going to refer to the Oxford Dictionary to help:

bal·ance [ˈbaləns] NOUN
1. an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain 
upright and steady: 
"slipping in the mud but keeping their balance" ·
synonyms: stability · equilibrium · steadiness · footing

I appreciate the example they provide, “slipping in the mud but keeping their balance”. I can relate to that. It defines balance as tenuous yet firm. Precarious and cautionary but upright and steady.

Balance doesn’t mean sure footed. In fact, I am most likely to be seeking better footing when balance is even, but slip and slide aside, I remain upright.

Tonight I celebrate that balance and while I do it while physically alone, I do it forging ahead with plans to join my Beloved.

The past and future are even tonight and beginning tomorrow the days grow shorter and each shortened day brings me closer to her.

Whether you call this day Mabon, The Second Harvest, Wine Harvest, Feast of Avalon, Winter Finding, or, my personal favorite, Cornucopia, I wish that this Autumn Equinox finds you in harmony and balance with all that you do and that your own harvest is as rich as my own.

 

 

Image: “Effervescent” by Christina Rivera

by J M Greff

Timeless

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Time is as often friend as foe. It flows steadily. Never ending. We can tell ourselves that it is an illusion. That only “Now” exists. But that’s a half truth. Now is the only place we exist but we live in a progression of time. In our human form we have a beginning and an end. We are born, we live, we die. What happens in between is a combination of circumstances and events guided by will or careless indifference and interpreted by intention and understanding or misunderstanding.

I chose to embrace that knowledge some time back. To acknowledge that I had a beginning. That this body will at some point fail. That how I live now is entirely up to me. Not everyone gets that choice. Some are born into short and brutal lives. Some never get the chance to live at all.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I see glimpses from time to time. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets in the arms of my Beloved. Compassionate days that flow into passionate nights. A flow of energy between us that builds and shares and expands. Perpetual. Timeless.

I want those things.

Time, however, often chooses the pace and, thus, can affect the quality of Now… if we allow it to. Plans made need to be shuffled again and again before they can be implemented and even then I must remain flexible to last second alterations.

This is where I am now: Making the best of unexpected changes. Unexpected changes making the best of me. Guiding the future with intention and understanding with one difference, mutual desire.

Not the base and often destructive sexual or sensual desire of immature love, though certainly that exists, how can it not? I do desire the physical connection of my lover. Intensely. More than that, however, is the desire to give and receive love. Physical. Emotional. Psychological. Spiritual. To create something together under the guidance of those intentions of compassion, connection, union, care, growth, and so much more that I so often describe as simply “love and gratitude” and through those intentions build something lasting. Eternal. Timeless.

Today the flow of Now across which time passes and at the edge of which I exist is both friend and seeming foe. It prevents immediate satisfaction of our goals. Blocks access to the woman I love. But every second that passes brings me ever closer to her and to Divine Union with her. In this it can only be considered friend.

I could focus on the obstacles or focus on the goal. The choice is made easy by these facts:

The obstacles are temporary.

Love is timeless.

I choose love.

 

 

Image: from the “Timeless” series by Moe Shirani

by J M Greff

Change

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Change is the only constant. Change happens. Which is just a nice way of saying shit happens. But change itself is neither “good” nor “bad”. It is simply change.

Sometimes that change is small, easy to deal with; a fender bender, a missed appointment. Other times it is larger and affects us in unforeseen ways; the work season, already too slow, comes to a sudden halt leaving us worried, possibly near panic, about how we will survive. Sitll other times it is dramatic, profound; our home is blown away in a hurricane so massive it clears the land, burned in a wildfire so out of control that the smoke covers 5 states.

Though change itself is often out of our hands, where those changes lead us is almost always up to us.

Do I give in to the panic? The rage? The fear? Do we rebuild our homes? These are choices. The choices lead to decisions. The decisions, if based on intentions of love and gratitude rather than fear and panic, can lead to unexpected new places. New lives. New love. All of them of our choosing.

It’s okay to be angry with the Universe for these things, She’s used to it. No one wants their home destroyed or to lose their job after barely scraping by, but it’s important to look beyond those events to the possibilities and opportunities they open. New choices. New paths.

I am leaving North Dakota soon. Change has opened new doors for me. Opened my heart and my mind to a new life. I’ll be damned if I sit here and worry about what I don’t have when what I can have is so much more.

Know that whatever change you are facing, we all face it at some level, all of us. In that simple knowledge you are assured that you are not alone. Know also that no matter how insurmountable that change may feel it is simply the Universe saying “I love you. Time for something new.”

What that something is, is entirely up to you.

This change will be good because I will make it good.

 

by J M Greff

Wish you were here

How I wish you were here.

Or I there with you.

Not this distance.

This painful punishment of purpose.

Unfair actions of the Universe

creating love at distance.

Impossible miles

increased by insurmountable odds

of our own creation.

Of my creation.

The price paid

for becoming me.

Damn this misfortune.

This condemnation.

The Divine has no right.

If love is her intention

then why the obstruction?

Seething with silent melancholy

I step to the mirror

and gaze at that man.

See beyond those feelings.

Beyond the frustrations.

Beyond the need for blame.

I am sure.

Confident.

I am loved.

I am servant to the Divine,

and have served her well,

this is not punishment.

Not misfortune.

Not condemnation.

Those are words

that describe how I feel.

They come from within.

Not from the Divine

whose only purpose is Love

and creation.

I will the miles to evaporate.

Command the distance to dissipate.

Speed the flow of time.

Increase the range of my love

to envelop even from here

my love so far away

and a life I have yet to live

knowing that we will succeed.

But still,

I wish you were here.