Wishing all of you the very best of health, happiness, and sharing joy with those you love this Mother’s Day. – gfs
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Tag Archives: childhood
Shades of blue
Snow covered landscapes
Memories frosting our lives
Talk of simpler days
Passing years in our youth
Moments without judgement
Remain in dreams
Thoughts crystallized
Formed in the twilight before
Ever there was
a way to remain
In the joy and laughter
of children
This then the dream
Forgotten at the gate
Sought in ten thousand shades
Of blue beneath a star dappled dome
Opened before
The world ever asked
To become
The life we once knew
Underneath the heart
how broken shall we find
ourselves, our spirit, and soul
before we come to understanding
the choice, the sense and reason
before the dreams awakening
unfolding flower scents in love
the color of a spring in bloom
alights around an after-noon
to sit in silence wondering
at the time we came to know
the weight of all our schemes
and things, our destiny revealing
these are days to try the soul
yet what’s uncovered melts
the ice that held the heart
within, without its reasoning
Image: https://www.wikiart.org/en/ivan-shishkin/fallen-tree-siverskaya
Eulogy for my Sister
Spoken for the wake of my beloved sister JoAnn –
In the conclusion of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell tells us it was Nietzsche who said “Live, as though the day were here.” He goes on to say; That every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer – not in the bright moments of the tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.
Jo-Ann, today we hear your silence. A voice that speaks in our memories of your trials and your victories, as living proof of all we’ve seen you stand up to. Not only a disease, but your love of family, of life, and your voice for the law, equity and justice. A voice that will long echo your story … A young mother who knew, in her time, education would pay her the best dividend. You worked and attended Law School full time, not just chasing, but grabbing hold of your dreams … all the while knowing, as you often said, for a woman it was: “Another day, another 78 cents.”
You told me not long ago, in the midst all those therapies, that each day you had a choice; Stay in bed, or get up, put your feet on the floor and face the day. Gathered here, are many witnesses that every day you chose Nietzsche’s advice.
By God’s grace, you and I became brother and sister. We grew up in one of the best examples of a dysfunctional baby boomer family, and we remained lifelong friends. I have celebrated your joys, known your darkest fears, shared your remarkable dinner table, and felt your deepest sorrows. There are no regrets where love lives in the heart.
We laughed often, cried together, and yes, we argued a bit … I was blessed. Not with the quiet blessing at a dinner table, but a hard won blessing from all the bits and pieces of a lifetime of love that now lives forever in my soul.
Sis, you have opened my eyes to a truer understanding of our reason for being… To live every day as Spirit meant it to be … Full of breath, of heartbeats, and emotions. Seizing every day with a love for all life has to offer, always remembering that – “The sky would have no rainbow, if the eyes had no tears.”
I love you … and I will truly miss your voice …
Link to Remembrance of JoAnn R Sensale
Where we fell
What gates to hell were thrown open
East of Eden
Where serpents slithered in the grass
and branches of fruit trees
waiting to be picked
or bitten in return
What knowledge is so sacred
we should be forsaken its truth
the memory of longing runs deep
where blood stains the rivers
and essence is draining from life
Take all the laughter
children are playing
adult games and wishing they were
Then finding pretending
was more fun than the living
inside the mortgage of life
Eat of the fruit, drink all the wine
knowledge is not to be kept
Dreams so uncertain
are reasons for living
the days and nights as the stars
would fall to their ending
and beginning again
take a walk in the Garden of Earth
Filling the senses
with mem’ries of dreams
writing rings in the seasons
of life
Photo: Google Images – http://fineartamerica.com
Roots and Wings
Storms with thunder roll
across the land
Lives are trees uprooted
by the winds of change
Emotions tolling like bells
Far distant steeples
fall silent in the rain
As the water pools
Running in the streets
Streaming through our lives
Going home again
Faded memories waiting
Behind doors unopened
Through decades only dreams
walked these halls
How can I speak to friend
of the sense and the feelings
How the living and the dead
Reach up in bird songs
under the canopies of green
Stillness echoes from the hills
Honeysuckle blossoms on the breeze
Breakfast baking in the kitchen
Time cannot steal you away
Home lives forever in the heart
Image: http://www.dragonshades.com/tag/sunset/
Please visit: http://backtowhatever.com/2015/07/19/diary-of-a-return/
Traveler of Souls
A part of all is known
the one who bore these souls
New life, new reason came
Wrapped inside love’s season
Longing to be, of a world unknown
Given breath barely breathing
A warm heart was once a part
and now apart from the womb
Into the home beside the hearth
Wonder at the reasons …
Whose choice was this to be
and what seed was planted ‘neath
The soils and the sins
Forever, wanting eyes to see
itself within love’s season
To hear the music of the soul
The ringing in the ears of time
The method and the madness echoes
Reaching out to some sad truth
and lost not knowing why
Eternities are ever present
A sacred cord her love conceals
Desire’s everlasting quest
Divine the mother’s holy light
To the travelers of souls
Image: http://www.ronnadetrick.com/touching-the-unknown-the-sacred-feminine/
Let There Be Light
Let There Be Light
This is a call, a statement of reality, of truth that is inviolate, knowable, and a lifetime of searching that has only opened the door and allowed a seeker inside. Beyond the door is a new dimension, and as surely as there was this portal that opened, there is an infinity of passages from place to place, and realm to realm.
I cannot, and do not, wish to impose my thinking, or my world view upon anyone. My only purpose is to shine light into darkness, and re-assure those who have traveled a little less far, that there is Light upon the path, and one only needs to follow the prompting of the soul in order to find it shining greater and greater into our days.
Sadness is a disease we have created to describe the way we have forsaken all the greatness of experience by living the way we do. We have been taught since our earliest memories can conjure, to follow rules, to speak when spoken to, work hard, and accept what we get. While all of these are ethics that can build character, they should not be shackles that bind us to a life of repetitiveness and drudgery, interspersed by binge vacations that are no less taxing than our work, schooling, or other daily requirements of being in the world.
Let There Be Light in whatever vibrational expression it was uttered at the beginning of time as we perceive it, is an expression of a covenant between the prime creator and creation, allowing a connection to exist through eons and ages, from that place, to this present moment. It is forever reminding us of our connection to all there is, within and without, revealing we are truly stardust. We are the universe gazing at itself in the mirror!
Time is the relative motion in consciousness, compared to the relative motion of the background of experience. We think we see in time, we have a measure of time on the clock, hands in motion, as our hands are in motion. Relativity defines time as the fourth dimension, but who can do the math, and even greater, who has the ability to check the math? Quantum physics is delving into ideas of a hyperverse and multiverse, trying with their great machinations of both theoretic mathematics and engineering to define the root cause in a language that simply cannot be known in this consciousness, and therefore will forever remain theory, always and only, conjuring some semblance of the greater truth.
Dr. Raymond Moody, who has done extensive research on Near Death Experience, after hundreds of interviews with people who had NDEs, saw a remarkable similarity between the descriptions of each and every one. It was not the place they went to, or the light they saw, the people they met, or the reasons they returned, it was the common realization that time was no longer a fact, no longer had any meaning, in the world they entered into. Any attempt to describe it, face to face with him, back in the breathing, heart beating, presence of our existence on Earth, caused them to feel that no matter how hard they tried they could barely convey the magnitude of the moment. Words did not suffice to give it meaning. It was a point and it was infinity all at once.
Let There Be Light is as profound a sentence as one can utter. Except for the rare occasion when it is read or quoted from scripture, does it ever cross our lips, or our mind? Standing before the sunrise, does wonder at the sight of it embrace our thoughts, or does the waking into the realm of all our memories of yesterdays, and plans for tomorrow, silence this everlasting reminder of the moment of creation for another day. Why do we allow it to slip away, swallowed up in our time, appointments that must be met, places we have to be, while we continue to think we are alive in the world?
To be continued …
Photo: Sedona Sunset by GFS
The Patriarch
This is the transcript of the eulogy I gave at the funeral service for my wife’s father who passed four years ago today.
Victor surrounded by Family 2007
Admiral “Bull” Halsey said after the Battle for Midway Island that “…there are no great men, only ordinary men, forced by circumstances to do great things”
Some warriors never see the battle field, but instead they are given life, and all the ordinary circumstances that will make them extraordinary people… That will make them heroes to families who sit in places like this today – recalling all the times they spent together. Times with their husbands, fathers, grandfathers, friends and neighbors. Memories, that in their minds will always be larger than life.
I think then that heroes are ordinary men who accept the circumstances of their own lives and do great things …
the Seasons of Life
There are so many things we’ll still see
steely eyes, compassion and anger
Hallowed hands that shaped our lives
Sunny days of youth, bus stops and beaches
life, in all the places where we grew ~
The birthdays, marriages, and christenings
Learning, laughing and crying out loud.
All the ways we were family,
And times we wondered if we were friends?
There’s a voice we’ll still hear in many words:
The war is over, you’re going home –
to Roses, to children dancing
and Maggie’s back in town.
Beaches where oceans will whisper – just float!
And telephones ringing
waking with sarcasm stinging
Lennon sisters swinging
Miller’s band
and Mets games on TV.
And the scents of the seasons will linger
Christmas evergreens and sugar cookies
Thanksgiving turkeys, apple pies
lilacs, lilies, roses red ~
and new mowed summer lawns.
The smell of sweat
that burns the eyes
as sawdust flies
building our lives
and our families
Yet, most of all our hearts will keep
each day and every way we felt
Our pride, returned with pride
Each hurting from a fall
The comfort of the arms and hands
The jester and the smile
All of this was his to give
The Patriarch
Who kept us all within his heart
Who now, forever, and always
will live within our souls
In the film “Eat, Pray, Love” – they talk about the Italian word ‘Atraverssiamo’, meaning “let’s cross over”
Today, we all cross over into a new place, one where we follow the way Vic lead for us, the way an ordinary man does extraordinary things. Rises at 5 AM to take a train to NYC, to drive a bus, walk a beat, working split shifts, to raise a family. Spends scores of years doing the ordinary things that when I look around me here, I see have turned to into extraordinary achievements.
And, I know that when I listen in the quiet of my mind, I will hear the sounds of seabirds, carried on the wind, where he rests along the shore, of an ocean we call – Eternity …
May the Almighty grant his soul eternal rest,
and may this family always be blessed with
his strength, his peace, and his love
Thank you Victor, for all you have given to this world,
Peace be with you always,
Amen.
I choose love
breath unto breath
and eye unto eye
nights wrapped
in each others longing
so simple these dreams
come into being
through light
we forever are forming
from all of the places
and lives we have touched
revolving through worlds
once our home
a universe suddenly
born to our senses
the places our hearts
choose to roam
through seashells on beaches
and grasses grown green
days falling warm
on the skin
leaves the reminders
of destiny sealed
in the places
our hearts
would begin
to know the forever
of life now beholding
this starlight
has come out to shine
here under heaven
reminders of choices
the love we have come
here to find
http://www.desktopwallpapers4.me/digital-art/silhouette-of-a-couple-21351/
grandfathersky 