Thin Spaces, Holy Sparks, & Sweetnesses
Moonlight, Wood Island Light Winslow Homer
Thin Spaces
“Thin spaces” in Celtic philosophy are places where the veil between this world and the one beyond—between light and shadow—is very thin. At times, translucent.
Some find liminal spaces in the mystery of landscape, in moments, in nature, in us...you can find thin spaces very easily when you look deeply. The present moment is the threshold of a thin space.
Textile, Anonymous, Alsatian
Holy Sparks
In mystic Judaism’s Kabbalah, God created the world by divine light that filled vessels, but they shattered. The vessels' shards are our imperfect, broken world. Holy sparks of light remain in the shards and long to return to their source.
Whether metaphor, myth, or mysticism, some believe humans' work is to repair the world (Tikkun olam) by returning the sparks. Have you seen them?
Hummingbird and Apple Blossoms Martin Johnson Heade
Sweetnesses
There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals, a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails. It's true I'm happy now. - Raymond Carver
Even while you have pain in your heart, you can enjoy the many wonders of life—the beautiful sunset, the smile of a child, the flowers and trees. - Thich Nhat Hanh
“We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light,
with patience."
― Pablo Neruda | El Mar y Las Campanas | The Sea and The Bells.
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Birdwing to sky
The light in the feathers in the blue.
What interchangeable elements are there.
Look closely and they are not apart—
only suspended in time for a moment.
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Dark matter holding stars,
holding us in spirals
What else is in between the stars,
between us?
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At night, my arm around you,
your heart beating,
you put your hand on my chest,
closing the circuit.
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Rose’s eye, a circle of black surrounded by sky
that holds all in view,
reflects, inverts, transmits, perceives
the entire cosmos,
which has unfurled all to now,
to bring into being, this. Her.
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Tree swallows
dart above us
their white bellies
shooting stars
across the blue.
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As tens of billions of molecules come in to my body,
trade places with carbon dioxide—
surely, you are there.
Surely the cloud enters me, the cloud leaves me.
My longing to find you in everything isn’t wistful.
It happening now.
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I look out at the window framed in by moonlight
and all the shadows are my favorite shadows
the sounds are my favorite sounds
the stillness my favorite stillness
your breath, my favorite thing.
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The light of each day,
its flame or its repose,
they deliver to us, taking them from time,
and so our treasure
is disinterred in shadow or light,
and so our kisses kiss life:
all love is enclosed in our love:
all thirst ends in our embrace.
Here we are at last face to face,
we have met,
we have lost nothing.
-Neruda
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Walking home tonight, all of us, I carry
my 4-year-old daughter with a
skinned knee piggyback.
We’re fanned out in the street,
our shadows long in front of us,
small silver seed circles drift from the elm tree
spinning bright, in the wind, caught
in the glint of sun, shimmering down, like coins,
for us.
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Is all light late, the echo to some prior bell?
Is it because I'm tired that I don't know?
Or is it because I'm dying?
When will I be born? Am I the flower,
wide awake inside the falling fruit?
-Li-Young Lee | Book of My Nights
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Learn from the cottonwood
who sails its seeds in cloudless sky
without want of any return
every seed given freely
on the lightest lone white wing
with slim yet hard hope
that something
will take hold.