I am the only man
today
in yoga class.
Fifteen women and me.
I am here
with my wife
Susan.
Next to her a woman
on her left.
I am
on her right.
I recognize the woman.
I say
"You look familiar."
She says
"I am a cashier
at Big Y Supermarket."
"Ah,"
I say.
"I thought you might have recognized me."
"I see
so many people,"
she says.
I am
here
with my yoga family.
My body is
relaxed.
My mind is
calm.
Teacher speaks
and says
"Shanti
Shanti
Shanti
Shanti
Peace
Shanti
Peace
Shanti
Peace."
My eyes closed.
I move
from
unreality
to reality
from darkness
to light.
I am
with my yoga family
I am.
Amen, Amen, I say to you
This is the day the Lord has made
Rejoice and be glad
Join us onboard
The Intention Express
Consider this
Yoga Indra
A magic carpet ride
Come, Come
Shanti, Shanti
Faith and Doubt
Will be your companions
The source will be
Your guide, this is
A sacred mystery
An ancient form
Of meditation
A spiritual guide
To become
More fully
What you are
Created to be
Don't fall
To sleep
On Saturday I wore an old flannel shirt Bought years ago Black and Red Bought probably at WalMart I didn’t know Better, underneath I wore a Red T-shirt Life is Good A camera Mountain range On the shirt Two favorite things These are a few Of my favorite things A gift From Susan I made her a peach And raspberry cake And a bacon, mushroom Spinach quiche Life is good She made bread
Teacher spoke softly saying
Breathe in
Through your nose
Breathe out
Through your mouth
Breathing in deeply
Helps me to center myself
Thoughts come and go
Like the clouds above
The urn, when breathing
Breathe, when praying
Pray, when looking
See, the birds
Engraved on the urn
There too triangles
Circles and straight lines
Signs that are read
Top to bottom
Bottom to top
In the distance
Out the window
Old buildings
In need of repair
Alludes to the thought
The Church can never be completed
Always, like us, in need
Of breath, of repair
We see a peacock
We know from our art
History classes
It can be easy to ignore
Birds and peacocks
As symbols or art
But writing stems
From the pictorial
The peacock became a symbol of immortality in Christian art
The peacock serves as a reminder of the Resurrection and eternal life
The peacock is symbolic of re-growth and rejuvenation,
Royalty, respect, honor, and integrity
The peacock is also a symbol of beauty, love, and passion
In Egypt the peacock was linked to the worship of the sun god, Amon-Ra and associated with the all-seeing eye of Horus. To the Hindus, the peacock was associated with Hindra, the god of thunder who became a peacock endowed with one hundred eyes that enabled him to watch out for the demon Ravana
Peacocks are also symbolic in the Buddhist religion
Symbolic because they display their feathers by opening their tails they are associated with openness and purity, and their feathers are even used in Buddhist purification rituals
Breathe in
Breathe out
Teacher softly speaks
This advice from Swami Buaji
Be kind
Be peaceful
Be tolerant
Begin the day with Love
Spend the day with Love
End the day with Love
This is the way to Source
Breathe
Walking my dog
Freddy
A mini-labradoodle
Early morning
Past a bevy of doves
One dove calls out
Says, I think
"Nice to see you.
"Nice to see you.
"Nice to see you."
A man opens his front door
Calls out
"Hello, Boss."
Boss. I think
I have never been a boss.
I have been a newspaper boy.
A gardener.
A lifeguard.
A Sunday School teacher.
A girl's softball coach.
A copywriter.
A marketing executive.
A writer.
A photographer.
A speech-writer.
A salesperson.
An art gallery owner.
I call out to the man
Who called me boss
"Nice to see you."
A New Year. New Resolutions. New Alterations. A Time To Bloom.
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”
~Some of the most quoted words of the Bible are from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verses 1-8
Reading from Unity:
This sacred list from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 represents all the seasons and the important changes of our lives. Some are happy times, others sad; some are productive while others seem wasteful; some inspire peace and others bring pain.
All of them are necessary for us to learn, grow, and evolve as spiritual beings. Their appearance is not by accident. If we look closely enough, each experience reveals a loving, divine purpose that we can learn to trust.
You can read about the lessons of these verses here.
Susan and I received our first Christmas cards of the season yesterday.
Inside one card was this beautiful message:
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
~~Howard Thurman
I stood at the kitchen window.
I watched the sparrow.
The sparrow gathered our dog's fur.
Freddy's fur.
I wondered if the sparrow could fly
With the weight of the fur in its beak.
I watched the sparrow
Fly with the fur.
I watched the sparrow fly over the fence.
I lost sight of the sparrow.
In Sunday School we learned.
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care."
And “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."
This is a Holy Mystery.
Last Spring a robin built a nest
In a wreath on our front door.
I watched another robin
Build a nest in our Weeping Cherry Tree.
I watched a sparrow, too.
“Listen to the Lion” has been said to rank amongst Morrison’s greatest work. “During the 11-minute voyage, he sings, shouts, improvises lines, delays and omits them, until he symbolically re-creates the sound of an unleashed lion within himself. It remains a considerable achievement.” (Johnny Rogan)[5]
“Listen to the Lion” was one of the 1001 Songs written about in the 2006 book by critic Toby Creswell who says in part: “Listen to the Lion has almost no words, just the phrase ‘Listen to the Lion inside of me’…He sings the phrases like an incantation, sometimes desperate and longing for love and at other times boasting of the power of his passion; and then at other times he sings in despair that these emotions have brought him nothing but ruin. He doesn’t need to speak, there’s nothing more to be said…”[6]
A sequel to this 1972 song was included on Morrison’s 2005 album, Magic Time that was entitled, “The Lion This Time”.[7]
During the November 2008 concert performances at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, Morrison used this song as an encore after the live Astral Weeks song performances. It has been listed under a new extended title of “Listen to the Lion – The Lion Speaks” on the track listing of the live album Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. In a January 2009 interview, Morrison said: “I wanted to end the Astral Weeks set with ‘Madame George’. I wanted to tell people at the end these songs are a ‘train of thought’ and leave it at that. I think ‘Lion’ is a song that is all me, as well, so I ended with that…It’s a song I guess about me—probably the only one about me.”[8] Also showing the magnitude of this work to the composer is the announcement that Morrison’s new record label will be entitled Listen to the Lion Records.[9
Andy Whitman, a Paste reviewer called this song, “the quintessential Van Morrison moment, the most thrilling and thrillingly strange soul music—in all senses of the term—ever recorded. It’s the sound of a man casting off all earthly bounds and battering down the gates of heaven.”[10]
Jay Cocks commented on the song: “You can hear Morrison courting this muse in the Pentecostal growls and incantations of Listen to the Lion on his 1972 album Saint Dominic’s Preview…”[11]
In his article on Morrison in the 1976 edition of the Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll, critic Greil Marcus wrote, “Across 11 minutes, he [Morrison] sings, chants, moans, cries, pleads, shouts, hollers, whispers, until finally he breaks away from language and speaks in Irish tongues, breaking away from ordinary meaning until he has loosed the lion inside himself. He begins to roar: he has that sound, that yarrrrragh, as he has never had it before. He is not singing it, it is singing him.” [12]
Robert Christgau‘s review of Saint Dominic’s Preview uses this song to point out that vocals are sometimes more important than words: “Listen to the lion,” he [Morrison] advises later, referring to that lovely frightening beast inside each of us, and midway through the eleven-minute cut he lets the lion out, moaning and roaring and growling and stuttering in a scat extension that would do Leon Thomas proud.”[13
Bruce Barone 