what we can learn from water

~ Raymond Tang

bring the jewel back

The purpose of the journey is compassion.

When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion. 

The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, 

to join the two things together.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen,

 but experienced, unity and identity in us all. 

~ Joseph Campbell

from The Hero’s Journey (On Living in the World)

Christianity and Unknowing

~ Richard Rohr

the dark night

In the delicious night,

In privacy, where no one saw me,

Nor did I see one thing,

I had no light or guide

But the fire that burned inside my chest.

That fire showed me

The way more clearly than the blaze of noon

To where, waiting for me,

Was the One I knew so well,

In that place where no one ever is.

Oh night, sweet guider,

Oh night more marvelous than dawn!

Oh night which joins

The lover and the beloved

So that the lover and beloved change bodies!

In my chest full of flowers,

Flowering wholly and only for Him,

There He remained sleeping;

I cared for Him there,

And the fan of the high cedars cooled Him.

The wind played with

His hair, and that wind from the high

Towers struck me on the neck

With its sober hand;

Sight, taste, touch, hearing stopped.

I stood still, I forgot who I was,

My face leaning against Him,

Everything stopped, abandoned me,

My worldliness was gone, forgotten

Among the white lilies.

~ St. John of the Cross

from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross 

version by Robert Bly

photo by imogene cunningham