Your head is still
restless, rolling
east and west.
That body in you
insisting on living
is the old hawk
for whom the world
darkens.
If I am not
with you when you die,
that is just.
It is all right.
That part of you cleaned
my bones more
than once. But I
will meet you
in the young hawk
whom I see
inside both
you and me; he
will guide
you to the Lord of Night,
who will give you
the tenderness
you wanted here.
a poem by Robert Bly
His large ears
Hear everything.
A hermit wakes
And sleeps in a hut
Underneath
His gaunt cheeks.
His eyes blue, alert,
Disappointed,
And suspicious,
Complain I
Do not bring him
The same sort of
Jokes the nurses
Do. He is a bird
Waiting to be fed,-
Mostly beak-an eagle
Or a vulture, or
The Pharaoh’s servant
Just before death.
My arm on the bedrail
Rests there, relaxed,
With new love. All
I know of the Troubadours
I bring to this bed.
I do not want
Or need to be shamed
By him any longer.
The general of shame
Has discharged
Him, and left him
In this small provincial
Egyptian town.
If I do not wish
To shame him, then
Why not love him?
His long hands,
Large, veined,
Capable, can still
Retain hold of what
He wanted. But
Is that what he
Desired? Some
Powerful engine
Of desire goes on
Turning inside his body.
He never phrased
What he desired,
And I am
His son.
a poem by Robert Bly
“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to amend, and every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not guilty of my father’s blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have killed him. Still I mean to fight it out with you. I warn you of that. I’ll fight it out with you to the end, and then God will decide. Good‐by, gentlemen, don’t be vexed with me for having shouted at you during the examination. Oh, I was still such a fool then…. In another minute I shall be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri Karamazov offers you his hand. Saying good‐by to you, I say it to all men.”
His voice quivered and he stretched out his hand…
‘The Brothers Karamazov’ written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
God speaking to St Catherine of Siena:
“It is necessary for you to have two lights derived from this primary light, and to these two I will also add a third. The first lightens you all to know the transitory nature of the things of the world, all of which pass like the wind. But this you cannot know thoroughly, unless you first recognize your own fragility, how strong is your inclination, through the law of perversity with which your members are bound, to rebel against Me, your Creator (not that by this law any man can be constrained to commit any, even the smallest sin, against his will, but that this law of perversity fights lustily against the spirit). I did not impose this law upon you, in order that My rational creature should be conquered by it, but in order that he should prove and increase the virtue of his soul, because virtue cannot be proved, except by its contrary. Sensuality is contrary to the spirit, and yet, by means of sensuality, the soul is able to prove the love which she has for Me, her Creator. How does she prove it? When, with anger and displeasure, she rises against herself. This law has also been imposed in order to preserve the soul in true humility. Wherefore thou seest that, while I created the soul to Mine own image and likeness, placing her in such dignity and beauty, I caused her to be accompanied by the vilest of all things, imposing on her the law of perversity, imprisoning her in a body, formed of the vilest substance of the earth, so that, seeing in what her true beauty consisted, she should not raise her head in pride against Me.
The Dialogue of St Catherine of Siena
The shift from meditation to contemplation entails, in effect, a different manner of knowing God. Saint John of the Cross writes in The Ascent of a “loving knowledge”, a “general loving knowledge” (AMC 2.14.2), a knowledge “where nothing is understood particularly and in which they like to rest” (AMC 2.14.4), “an act of general, loving, peaceful, and tranquil knowledge” (AMC 2.14.2). The stress is on a loving knowledge. The more spiritual and penetrating this loving knowledge, and the more interior it is to the soul, the more the soul does not perceive it in any clear manner, even as it is a loving knowledge. “The purer, simpler, and more perfect the general knowledge is, the darker it seems to be and the less the intellect perceives” (AMC 2.14.8). Perhaps we may question how it can be a knowledge if it is unperceived. The reply would be that it is a knowledge by love, a knowledge by means of an inclination drawing the soul. If it is not perceived or felt initially, the reason is the delicacy of this inclination and the strong sense of incapacity due to the ligature of the faculties. But in time this knowledge is felt, as it were, if a soul is receptive. It is felt as a simple inclination to love in the inner quiet of prayer. The desire to love is what is given to the soul in this knowledge, the awareness of a longing within the hidden depths of the soul to love God. –‘Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation’ written by Father Donald Haggerty
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