#mike morrell

Art: MJ/Me

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I died as mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was human; Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? As a human, I will die once more, Reborn, I will with the angels soar. And when I let my angel body go, I shall be more than mortal mind can know. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, 'To the One we shall return.' ― Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī: Mathnawi III: 3901-3906

['Saint Michael of the Desert' by Jennifer Helminski]

[h/t Mike Morrell]

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…They would have called it Love, Believers with this one sense of magic, Stringing the gold of faith from voice To voice… ….the chain Reached from earth to haven, really, Like the chain Milton imagined, Dangling planet earth like a bauble. Their chain reached to a husband's Cancer, a widow’s broken hip, and hauled Forth out of the depths, hand over hand, The out-of-reach dying, the fallen And falling-to-pieces. You might shrug At this quaint belief and its presumption, Unless you’d felt, as they each had, its tug. from “The Prayer Chain” in Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems by Mark Jarman, p. 19

Art by Jennifer Helminski

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Oftentimes, Advent is framed as a contest between ‘daybreak’ and ‘darkness,’ resisting the night to usher in the light.

But Henry Vaughan, 17th-century Welsh poet, was moved to observe:

“There is in God (some say), A deep but dazzling darkness.”

Perhaps the way we receive the blessings latent in this Advent season is not to chase away the darkness that we would hide, deny, and repress in ourselves and our current circumstances — but instead to embrace it.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung concurred, allegedly saying “What you resist, persists. What you embrace, dissolves.”

The Messiah whose advent we first anticipated — Jesus of Nazareth — would grow from his nurture in Mary’s dark womb to being a counter-cultural figure with powerful guidance that bucked the prevailing wisdom of his day. While his own brother James would teach the more standard approach of “resist the devil and he will flee from you,” Jesus advocated for embrace:

“Make friends with your Adversary quickly while you are together on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.” (Matthew, 5:25)

The early 20th-century esoteric Christian teacher G.I. Gurdjieff summarized this subversive path of embrace succinctly:

“If you are meditating and a devil appears, make the devil meditate.”

[Archangel Michael :: Special thanks to Jennifer Helminski for this stunning Bedouin Archangel art. h/t Mike Morrell]

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In the ocean, there's a mountain On the mountain, there's a forest In the forest, there's a garden In the garden, there's a flower In the flower, there's a nectar In the nectar, there's an answer In that answer, there's another And another, and another. — Regina Spektor, Up the Mountain There is in every person an inward sea And in that sea there is an island And on that island there is an altar And standing guard before the altar is the 'angel with the flaming sword.' Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon the altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes 'the angel with the flaming sword' to be placed upon your altar unless it be part of the fluid area of your consent. This is your crucial link with the Eternal. — Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Icon: 'Trinity—After Rublev, Southwark,' Meg Wroe: megwroe.com

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“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” – Jesus, Gospel of Thomas, Logion 70 Art: An ancient Chaldean depiction of Thomas’ encounter with the resurrected Christ.

“On the Winter Solstice - we mark the depths of the dark that forms the womb and the birth canal from which the light ushers. I note with sadness the many many spiritual authors and FB posts who want to make the Winter Solstice a 'celebration of light.' A spiritual obsession that focuses on going toward the light shows a split in one's psyche that is harmful and dangerous to our efforts for greater harmony. Holiness is hallowing our God as a God of the dark and as a God of the light. Let us take this day to begin to heal the harm created by the Enlightenment. The Winter Solstice is about the hallowed dark - the womb from which light is birthed. [And the Summer Solstice is about the hallowed light - the womb from which the dark is birthed.] In our Solstice rituals - that open 72 Hours of Stillness - let us wait for the increase of the light or the increase of the dark - and let us hallow both dark and light. Each plays with the other for our own holiness and wholeness. On this Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere - this day is the day to celebrate the depths of the dark. Let us light candles to decorate the darkness of the holy womb from which new radiance ushers. On this Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere - this is the day to celebrate the zenith of light. Let us celebrate how light at her strongest becomes a womb that births the holy dark. Picture: thank you Erin for find the source of this image! It is from "The Book of Hours of Luis de Laval". - Alexander John Shaia - Author & Journey of Quadratos