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The Star of Bethlehem

12 Nov

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Radiant, warm light envelops me.
I feel calm and content.
I feel I am in good hands.
I hear things around me, almost I imagine,
Like angels singing.
And in the music I lose all sense of time.
I feel transported to another world.
And I see colours, rich and varied,
So many I have never seen before.
I am lost in wonder.
Am I dreaming?

But this cannot be since I am very much cognizant of my beating heart.
I am aware of every particle of myself.
And I know that, should I wish to leave, I can.
Who are you that I sense around me?
Who holds me close and warm in their arms?
Who sings so sweetly this ethereal refrain?

Important events need to be marked.
A stamp of approval needs to be set upon them
In accordance with the worth and significance of the circumstance.
It is not too often that a celestial body is used as a seal on a propitious occasion.
And it is not often that the hand of the Mover of All Things
Is inspired to mark – so visibly and so dramatically –
An event seemingly only of import to the human race,
And then, seemingly, only in a context
Applicable to a small segment of that population.

There are times in our lives which can never be forgotten:
Times which, by virtue of their magnitude either in shock value or ecstasy value,
Are indelibly imprinted on our hearts and minds,
Never to be erased or lost.

Here, we have an inexplicable natural phenomenon,
Lighting up the night skies,
More brightly visible to those people from so long ago
Than could ever now appear in our electrically generated age,
Foretold by the seers of that time,
And linked, it would seem, to the humble birth of a baby
With no entitlement to an official title or inheritance.

It is as if a cross has been placed
On a treasure map of the whole complex creation,
Giving, to all who can see it,
The coordinates to a trove of precious jewels
And treasure beyond measure.
Follow the steps and you will find it.
How could any clue be more obvious?
How could any signal be demarcated more clearly?
How blind would one have to be to not realize that this is seriously important?

Surely, if it is there for all to see then it must mean something.
And surely, whoever placed the star in the sky
Believed it was that significant a happening
That everyone should know about it,
Down to the least educated and least valued of people.

It must have been like a thunderous shout from the skies,
An in-your-face declaration of “Look here, whoever you are!”
An impossible-to-miss notification of an event declared before all,
By a mighty Being with the power to move the heavens to Its command.

Perhaps we should revisit our thoughts
On the significance of this momentous occasion.
Perhaps, although we know the story and the importance
Of the soul whose birth was marked by it,
We should question why the births of other figures,
Teaching very similar scriptures,
Were not marked in such a manner.
It seems as if there is more to this than meets the eye.
It is as if, even now, we are being told
“The treasure you seek lies here,
At this time, in this place, in this humble heart.”

Perhaps we should try to open our minds,
And explore the knowledge we can find there,
To unlock the answers to this riddle.

I am taken up to the top of a rainbow of light.
I am bathed in incandescent colours.
I become transparent,
And like a prism I refract the rainbow colours
Into a spectacular kaleidoscope
Of translucent crystal light.

I feel perhaps like a star might feel,
Pulsing with vibrant, splendid energy.
And as I look down beneath me
I see an azure blue ball
Radiating its ethereal beauty,
Mystical and magical,
In a calm, patient, velvet sea.

I feel a connection,
I feel a deep communication
Which transcends my capacity to describe its essence.
The best I can do is say that the interconnectedness of all things
Seems to be anchored at this point in the universe;
Where an incomparable star
Was placed on the brow
Of a special baby human being –
A mark impossible to ignore,
Ever to be remembered,
And indelibly engraving in the mind of humanity
The existence of God.

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The Crucifixion of Christ

17 Aug

I hang my head in shame.
I am forever condemned.
As a prisoner of my own indiscretion
I have forfeited my life to an
Eternity of hell.

No one can take this burden from me,
No one can release me from the chaos of darkness,
No one can ever strip away the horror of my own iniquity.
I have been tricked by my own mind
Into committing this foul and heinous crime
On the pretext of justice
Oblivious of any wretched guilt consequent to my greed.

I cannot beg forgiveness
I cannot ask for mercy.
I cannot allow any leniency or
Relaxation of the laws of clemency.

I, of all people, have allowed
That which should never have been sanctioned,
To be actioned.
I have allowed,
Knowing the colour of innocence
And the colour of guilt,
A bloodbath of torture and cruelty.

Now my hands are stained
Permanently with the slaughter of
The innocent
The kind
The just
The compassionate
The gentle
The loving
The champion of mankind.
And from this I can never hide.

There are many reasons for murder.
And every one has, at its core,
Some semblance of justification
Some sense of reasonableness
Some grotesque payment of debt.
And as an administrator of peace and political will,
I have demanded and ordered
Brutal acts of violence
To quell the discontent of the masses
In order to rule according to the sentiments of the era
And the demands of the title of kingship.

But this,
This conundrum placed before me,
This impossible, unpalatable circumstance,
This dilemma set at my feet
Which threatens the very core of my fragile control,
This distasteful, despicable obnoxious affair
Looms in front of me
Like a grotesque monster breathing into my face
Its fetid breath of noxious vapour
Demanding retribution for a crime
That does not exist.

I am comfortable here
Curled up in the armchair of my
Remorse and guilt.
Though I am thrown into the darkest abyss
Of torture chambers and horrors
No pain can be too great,
No night nor day too long,
No event can be so cataclysmic
That the Universe of evil is smashed upon my head,
For me to wish myself dislodged from this unspeakable suffering.

And with open eyes and outstretched arms
I beseech the heavens
To ensure I am immortal.
For death, even at the end of eternity
Will be too light a sentence
For the poisoned arrow of my sin.

I look into the eyes of my plaintiff.
I see the depth of his compassion.
I see the lineage of his soul
And I see the grace of God
Enveloping him in a translucent, effulgent light.

I am a man of the world.
I have lived amongst the richest and poorest of souls.
I have been graced with an intelligence and perception
Way beyond my just deserts.
I have been given the sharp cunning of the fox
And the guile of the snake.
I have been given the strength of the bear
And the perception of the eagle.
I have risen among the ranks of the generals and the nobility.
And I have paid my dues to each and every one
With favours promised behind closed doors.
I have played the game of power
With the skill and genius of the professional,
And I have relished my advancement
Unashamedly at the expense of others.
And I have always known the price to be paid for this –
Long term pain for short term gain.
And for me it has always been the victory of the moment
Which fuels the blood in my veins
And the triumphal drumbeat of my heart.

Yes, I am a man of the world
And the world of man has lain in my palm of my hand,
Mine, all mine,
Like taking candy from a baby,
As natural as the playground bully,
As effortless as the tattle-tale words of the teacher’s pet.

And each move of mine
Has been as calculated and as strategic
As the greatest army generals that ever lived,
For the purpose of immediate personal gain
Regardless of the cost to any
Unfortunate who may cross my path.

Most people would see me as cruel, heartless and uncompromising.
And in dealing with the world, I am,
For that is the game of the era in which I find myself.
And I respect the rules of this engagement.
Its a dog-eat-dog time,
Kill or be killed,
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
No quarter given nor taken.
Mercy is weakness exposed
As fodder for the adversary.
To the victor goes all the spoils,
And the vanquished lie as
Rotting carcasses in the barren
Plains of contempt.

And into the midst of this
Shark-infested ocean of corruption,
Here, amidst our battered sensibilities
And greed for self,
Into this pit of filth and betrayal,
Comes this quiet, gentle man,
Who only seeks to heal the wounded,
Broken heart of humanity,
Restore the memory of our own heritage
And remind us of the meaning of life.

I remember him.
In my dreams I have seen him.
In the recessed vaults of my memory
I have stored his image.
I had hoped to let sleeping dogs lie.
I had quelled the nagging reprimands
Prompted by his image.
I had managed to sidestep the possibility of this encounter
By being absent from my duties.
I had begun to believe in my own power.
I had managed to conveniently forget this day might ever come.

Hell bent on my own mission of destruction
I had forgotten that even the best laid plans can go awry………

And in one split second,
I am confronted by the baying masses of wolves outside my enclave,
And the pure gracious spirit before me
Of a man of God.

The story of my actions is well documented.
It would be pointless to revisit them here.
Each word, each question, each answer
Is indelibly marked in the history of mankind.
My journal of political suicide is forever exposed to the public
And in the passing of my damning judgement,
I damned myself.

This is no ordinary man.
This is not your run of the mill political pawn,
This is no murdering, plundering beast of wanton destruction.
This is no ordinary mortal reaping the reward of past indiscretions.
Here is a pure and gentle being,
Standing quiet and still in the will of his own god,
Not wishing for miracles
Which would only feed into the superstitious minds of his persecutors,
Wanting only to show his people
How to serve God, unquestioningly,
By example,
Under the most dangerous and trying of circumstances:
The sacrifice of the lover for the beloved
Encapsulated in this significant spotlight of time,
Here at my feet, in my domain.

And seeing all this, as clearly as I see the usual
Strategies of war demarcating the boundaries of my life,
I, for once, so used to betraying my conscience
For the principle of self gain,
Mistaking the wretched knot bound in the pit of my stomach
For illness instead of fear,
Wantonly throw in my lot
With the baying pack of ravenous wolves.

Cold and wretched is this space of self loathing,
Cruel is the torture of mistaking the truth for a game.
How bitter and damning is this hindsight
Of living with the knowledge that,
For all my astuteness and genius,
I missed the only chance I had in a million lifetimes
Of redemption in the sight of God.

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Time

18 Jun

I have four letters in my name,
Four unprepossessing letters.
I am written down in your book so easily,
So recognizably,
So succinctly,
I am impressed.
A four-letter word,
An unprepossessing, recognizable, succinct word
That can only be meaningful
In the context of human existence.

I am measured by the demarcation of long and short intervals
Etched onto the wheel of evolution
And pocketed into eras of past, present and future.
I am inexorably expressed in the constant churning of day into night
And the battering of interplanetary revolutions
Upon the temples of our own solar systems.

I am wound tightly into the cogs of the seasons
And inked indelibly into earth’s orbit of the sun.
I mark everything in your existence with a yardstick
By which you can judge your position
In relation to everything surrounding your consciousness.
I am a concept from which you can never be free.
I am the sentinel of this universe
And you are captive in my stockade.

It would be best if you made friends with me.
My parameters are set,
And although I move constantly
I am immovable.
‘Inevitable’ is my hallmark description,
My force is untamable and impossible to arrest.
I am the intrinsic fabric of this universe’s construction.
I am the framework on which the system is built.
I came first and the decorations later.
If you strip away every element of human existence,
It is only at the stopping of the clock
That dissolution really occurs.
The whole illusion is built, essence upon essence,
From the first unit of an event inserted
Into the demarcation of an interval.

Knowing all this is of no use except to help you understand
That without me existence is non-existent,
And that you had best come to terms
With the limitations I saddle you with
So that you do not leave my jurisdiction
Before harvesting the crop that can only be grown here.

For within my confines
Lies the treasure of knowing mortality.
Concealed among the chaff and husks of the harvest
Lie the sweet, edible grains of understanding and realization.
Buried between the layers of threshing and sifting
Hidden truths are to be found
That are apparent nowhere else.

And it is because of my gift to you,
That of finality and the perception of limited resources,
That you are compelled to seek the fruit of human birth
And partake of its sweetness
Before it drops to the ground
And decays,
Its value wasted –
Spoilt and unrecognized.

[Time is an extraordinarily valuable tool that longs to be seen for its true value to us in this finite paradigm. Its constant ‘breathing down our necks’ wills us to wake up and perceive the true value of life.
Short of being able to speak to us directly, it does all in its power to make us uncomfortable in the full glare of its presence. It invades our every day with an urgency in whatever form it can manifest, goading us into action to serve our own souls as best we can given the circumstances in which we are placed.]

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2015

6 Jan

2015 Fireworks.

Hear me when I speak to you on the soft winds of change.
Open your hearts to the sound of new beginnings.
Let your mind clear itself of all preconceived notions, and discover once more the delight of rediscovery.

Look around.
Inspect the familiar:
-Those things that are hidden by their constancy.
-Those old friends that accompany you day in and day out,
-Those habits that you wear, unaware.
– Those opinions that have stealthily made their home in your head uninvited, unquestioned, unnoticed.

Look again!
See with new eyes the thoughts that you have thoughtlessly been harbouring.
Question them.
Interrogate their purpose.
Hold them to the light.
Revisit all the old concepts, folded neatly away in the cupboard of your mind.
In the cold light of day, with cobwebs and dust shaken from them,
Do they still serve?

A new year, a new beginning,
An opportunity to re-invent your own direction.

We demarcate the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks.
We compartmentalize the year into months and quarters,
And we red flag the birthdays, the anniversaries and milestones.
And all this order attempts to reign in the fleetingness of life…

But in truth, each year flies by faster than the one before,
And the hurtling of time unnerves us and leaves us bewildered and anxious in the wake of its illusion.
We cannot hold a minute in our hand,
We cannot turn back the clock,
We cannot replay our regrets and fashion them into achievement.
We are carried helplessly on the crest of a wave only to crash, inevitably, on the shore of death.

Therefore, do not waste your time holding on to old, worn out ideas that no longer serve you or hold relevance to your life ahead.
Revisit your ideals and your ethos,
Re-evaluate your customs and codes of conduct.
Re-assess all that is familiar and comfortable and convenient.
Leave no stone unturned, move house if you must.
Do not drag with you the decay of familiarity.

Life is fleeting, life is short, life is gifted in mystery.
Do whatever it takes to live in cognizance of your own uniqueness
And do not allow the stifling restrictions of inherited conventions
To blind you and confine you to actions that undermine
The worth of who you really are.

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The Philae Spacecraft – 26/11/2014

5 Jan

It is never too late to try.
Failures can be totally misconstrued and disappointment can easily obliterate the evidence of real success.
In my world, everything is planned right down to the last micromillimeter,
And the scale of time is expanded beyond imagination.
The world of space is so nearly out of the dimension of time that for the human mind to conceive it, pure genius has to be fashioned into a more malleable elasticity beyond the scope of ordinary man.
It is impossible, without the inherent superman IQ and endless hours of study and training, to appreciate the absolute magnificence of the achievement of my mission.
Up here, from where I sit looking back on my journey, I am in total awe and gratitude for all those who have contributed to my existence.

I sit here knowing that my arrival has been so long awaited,
Hoping against hope,
Wishing for success without daring to expect it,
Patiently being utterly impatient,
Dreaming that each calculation has been perfect,
And that each calculated guess directed by the intuition honed from experience has hit its mark.

It is within the confines of intellect that the boundaries of human existence can be expanded,
And it is in the spirit of collaboration that the whole transcends the sum of its parts.
It is in this realm of exactitude that the fine line between physical reality and imagination becomes blurred and melts into magic.

I am honoured to be here, launched into an odyssey of cosmic proportions.
I am humbled, that such an investment of trust has been placed in my heart,
And that such sacrifices have been made with only a hair’s breadth chance of success across a timeline so great.
It is my ardent desire that I shall prove worthy of the tasks set before me,
And that a little extra-terrestrial help will come our way and nudge the odds in our favour.
It is such a privilege to have been given the energy of earth-light.
It is my fervent prayer, that although the benefits of my mission have already been accrued,
I will be able to deliver insights greater than hoped.
It is my quest to serve and reward the endeavours of those pioneers who dare to dream the impossible, who execute the miraculous and who shatter the barriers of universal laws.

[The Philae spacecraft has been sent to wedge open the mysteries of the cosmos in order to allow a slither of understanding of the earth’s origins to be revealed and to stretch the boundaries of possibility in the human psyche in preparation for a vibrational leap in consciousness that will extricate the human race from the morass in which it is mired.]

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2014

1 Jan

new-year-2014I draw back the curtains.
I look across the vistas of time set before me and seek to discover my purpose hidden in the folds of history.

I see a time way back, when all the lands were covered in darkness.
I see glimmers of light peeking out trying to escape the cloying night and I see them one by one extinguished by the cloaking black.

I cast my glance a little nearer in time and see a mist clouding the valley so that it is impossible to ascertain any signs of life, yet the total darkness has dissolved.

And I cast my glance here in the ravine below me.
I see a canopy of thick forest, so thick that it is impossible to know where the bottom is.
So thick that you cannot tell where or when any living creature may be lodged.
So thick that you can only imagine suffocation and dankness within.

Then I look to my left.
It is a chaotic mess of grey, drizzled outposts.
Outposts of civilizations struggling to put one foot in front of the next, eyes downcast and shoulders stooped.
Yet at least I perceive life.

Then I look to my right and all of a sudden I see rainbows and sunlight and dew and grass.
And I see some small children with their faces turned up to the sun.
Then I see villages, brimming with life and creativity.
And a busyness, a busyness that quivers with energy and vibrance.

Heartened, I lift my eyes to the space directly above and in front of me.
I step back aghast because something here is so different.
It is not like anything that has appeared before.
It is not like anything that I have ever seen.
It is like a lightness, a glimmering softness of gentle hues that caress the rosy cheeks of dawn.
It is the sigh of contentment in the passing breezes,
And the golden dapples of sunlight dancing on the crystal streams.
I feel a sense of calm, a gentle breathing in and out of life,
An unhurried pace to the rhythm of life.

It is hard to tell where this new vista comes from.
It has just unfolded here in front of my eyes unheralded and unbeckoned.
It envelops me now, and I see only this.
I am caught up in contemplation as if in a dream yet fully conscious.
I know, I know there is no sleep here.

What message is this?
Is this the dawning of a new, wholesome age?
Is this the blueprint for a future world which takes its seed from this moment in time?

It is too good to be true,
And yet, as I close the curtains once more and turn back to my desk,
Everything has changed in the room.
Nothing is as it was a moment ago.
Its as if I have new eyes and a new way of seeing.
It is as if everything has shifted slightly and is now less solid.
I rub my eyes. I shake my head.
But to no avail.
My world has definitely, irrevocably changed.

And I know now as I sit down once more and pick up my pen,
Nothing I write will have the same meaning as it had before.
There will be a new nuance.
One of hope and softness, of light and color, of warmth and calm.

And I feel that this is the moment, in the turning of the great wheel of life,
When all the hard work has finally been done
That the time has now come to reap its reward.

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