SOAKED WITH INTELLIGENCE///
If a child were to appear at your door – cold, frightened, alone, and tired from a long journey…If he or she were anxious, heartbroken, raging, and confused… unsure of why they have come here, where God is, whether or not they have been forsaken…
Would you refuse entry to the little one? Would you first demand that his fear dissolve, her anxiety be healed, his confusion clarify, or her heart be mended?
In your most authoritative spiritual voice, would you urge the little one to first "get over it,” accept everything the way it is, urgently forgive those who have harmed them, or quickly “raise their vibration?”
Or would you provide sanctuary and safe passage from a long voyage? A warm, safe, contained temple in which the stories, the feelings, and the images of this one ragingly alive nervous system can be illuminated and held, articulated and metabolized in an environment of open, tender interest, curiosity, and love?
Inside this majestic human body the beloved is at work, spinning out worlds of experience which are soaked with intelligence, sacred data, and saturated with both sweet and fierce grace. Things are rarely what they seem here… doorways and portals opening and closing by way of the breath of the divine as it makes its way into form…
as it finds its way into this rare world of time and space… with you as its vessel.

- Matt Licata

March 31, 2022

December 11, 2020

The Song

So he began by singing a hymn and declaring,
Glory be to you, father.

And we circled around him and responded to him,
Glory to you, word.

Glory to you, grace.
Glory to you, spirit.

Glory to you, holy one.

Glory to your glory.

We praise you, father. We give thanks to you, light, in whom no darkness is.
Why we give thanks, I declare:

I will be saved and I will save.
I will be released and I will release.

I will be wounded and I will wound.
I will be born and I will bear.

I will eat and I will be eaten.
I will hear and I will be heard.

I will be kept in mind, being all mind.
I will be washed and I will wash.

Grace Dances
I will play the flute. Dance, everyone.
I will mourn. Lament, everyone.

A realm of eight sings with us.
The twelfth number dances on high.

The whole universe takes part in dancing.
Whoever does not dance does not know what happens.

I will feel and I will stay.
I will adorn and I will be adorned.

I will be united and I will unite.
I have no house and I have houses.
I have no place and I have places.

I have no temple and I have temples.
I am a lamp to you who see me.

I am a mirror to you who perceive me.
I am a door to you who knock on me.

I am a way to you, you passerby.

Amen

- The Round Dance of the Cross

October 21, 2020

I come home from the soaring
in which I lost myself
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain;
no more words.

To the others I was like the wind:
I made them shake.
I'd gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

-Rilke, Love Poems to God

October 15, 2020

‘There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.’

― Mirabai Starr, Interior Castle