Photo by gfs – Haleakala Sunset, Maui HI
There was a story
Told by sages
Of times
And trials
Lost to memory
Written in stone
Broken into
Forgotten sands
Such are the pages
History told
In voices
Long silent
Language unknown
Ears shuttered
Truth is not words
The best evidence
Only found
In the fires
Of mind!
Sons of the gods
who walk among us
hands to hold
and hearts beyond
the reason
of Saints
and sinners
Words let
reveal
the waste
or The Way
Then should
the Father
coming to be
awakened by
anger
in this
summer storm
quiet the thunder
fears revealed
nourish or flood
so feelings
will see
Ghosts ever
Holy, sacred
in glory
or secret
and ancient
forgotten
in time
this worship
shall empty
love’s longing
chalice
water or wine
what Spirits
will be?
Image: http://m.c.lnkd.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/4/005/072/2b4/0e66639.jpg
What cool water there must be in Montana, as the crystalline mountain snows melt into streams and make their way down river, leading ever to nourish the landscape, and ultimately after thousands of miles to their home in the sea.
Norman Maclean was fond of the water, and was graced in knowing the land and the water and the air the way he did. Without ever studying Zen he became entranced by these elementals, and came to know his God on earth in a way that would make many of us envious – jealous, and in so doing we slip farther away from our own salvation.
In his lifetime the analogy of the water is rich with meaning. We view a pond and standing at the shore we cannot see the bottom, since there is a wind and the waters are stirring, there are waves on the surface, ‘ripples on the water’, and these obscure what is below.
The mind is like the waters, deep, often dark and mysterious. Nature, the world around us, the senses and the perceptions are the wind and the waves, and the bottom of the pond is our destiny, our true self, the one which we seek, and are bound to know.
Looking at the water in this way we can see that until we still the waves, the constant motion of the mind flitting from here to there and back again, then the bottom will always be obscured, and our journey will be long and restless.
When we can rest on the waters edge, and the winds calm, as the sun shines warm upon our skin, the surface of the waters become a clear glass and the bottom … our eternal spirit … comes into view. Fleetingly at first, but evermore we are changed. In the moment of serenity, we know our God is within, and live renewed.
This is the Spirit Norman wrote of, and sought in the rivers that parted the earth throughout his boyhood, and to which he returned in old age. This is the Spirit the Native Americans knew. This is our source, the place we are bound, the place of our origin.
“I am haunted by water …” (Norman Maclean)
grandfathersky 
