Monday, July 12, 2004
Joy in Nature
In my recent entry which catalogued the various states of divine connection (ecstasy, wisdom, conpassion), I said very little about sheer joy. Joy does not necessarily involve any kundalini currents floating into consciousness via the subtle body. It is, rather, an overall sense of "feeling good," of being carried to a level of high exaltation, of total rightness. It comes to us frequently in moments of transcendence, often when we are deeply in tune with nature itself, and we and it seem to celebrate together.
Elizabeth Reninger, whose work has been published on this site earlier, writes poetry about such transcendent states springing from wonder and delight at the beauty of the natural world. She is, I think, in the line of the ancient Taoists who saw in nature amblems of the divine. The romantics of the West also contributed to this tradition, nature itself being a major componentof their vision. (We could mention Wordsworth, Thoreau, Emerson here.) Today, Mary Oliver in particular carries forward this heritage of the poet who intuits at a very deep level the mystery abiding at the heart of immanent reality, the secret unveiling itself all around if we but attend.
Here is another of Elizabeth's poems ispired by her excursions into the realms of nature (for her, also the realms of the spirit.)
Again, I am honored to share her work with you.
Butterfly
thumb-sized
dressed in white
velvet, flits among
jade spears, a quivering
cathedral of
leaves, willow and
cottonwood thickening
to green-gold the soft
banks of boulder creek
as mid-day sun pours through
onto churning
froth of small
waterfall
shining-white
white-shining
serene flow surrendering
to ecstasy
wings of air entering
a riot of
transparency ....
copyright, Elizabeth Reninger
Elizabeth Reninger, whose work has been published on this site earlier, writes poetry about such transcendent states springing from wonder and delight at the beauty of the natural world. She is, I think, in the line of the ancient Taoists who saw in nature amblems of the divine. The romantics of the West also contributed to this tradition, nature itself being a major componentof their vision. (We could mention Wordsworth, Thoreau, Emerson here.) Today, Mary Oliver in particular carries forward this heritage of the poet who intuits at a very deep level the mystery abiding at the heart of immanent reality, the secret unveiling itself all around if we but attend.
Here is another of Elizabeth's poems ispired by her excursions into the realms of nature (for her, also the realms of the spirit.)
Again, I am honored to share her work with you.
Butterfly
thumb-sized
dressed in white
velvet, flits among
jade spears, a quivering
cathedral of
leaves, willow and
cottonwood thickening
to green-gold the soft
banks of boulder creek
as mid-day sun pours through
onto churning
froth of small
waterfall
shining-white
white-shining
serene flow surrendering
to ecstasy
wings of air entering
a riot of
transparency ....
copyright, Elizabeth Reninger
