Story) The Naming Well . . . A fragment of the story . . .

 Reflections... on an inner thing of unsurpassed joy; a thing as easily destroyed as dew upon the grass or the sheen upon the petal of a flower, but here, I’ll set it down in writing, exposing the treasures of my inmost heart in simple allegory . . . 

 IT WAS MORNING in Everland ~ that eternal morning of a magical land that has no end of delights to it. In dream I was walking slowly through the upward valley wondering if I could be seen or known of anyone or anything. I was lonely.

   Soon I came to the very top of a low green hill. I saw the Clouds. I looked up and up at them. “Do you know my name?’”I asked.

   “Is it Cirrus, or Nimbus; Altostratus, or Cloud?’ they answered. “Is it Ribbon-Rain, or Cotton-Breeze; Airy-Swirl, or Billow?”

   “No,” I replied; and laughed. “They are not my name.”

   “But you are like a Cloud!” they said. “You are like us! Full of mystery!  ...We are blown and shaped by the Wind and no one knows what shape we will be tomorrow; or where we come from or where we are going. We are new every day; and you, too!” said the Clouds.

   “I, too, am full of mystery, like a beautiful Cloud?” I wondered; and I walked on to see what I should see.

                                                *

A short extract from my picture book:  “THE NAMING WELL”

Faltering Steps / The Bookmark Project

Faltering the steps I take in furtive forays

Through the sunlit lantern Brights

To find in day the strength to pass through night

That though shaking I might walk through dark

I find the gold of life that turns my pain to see

My goings helped, and known, and sheltered 

And entered there, know peace and happiness

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1

(c) Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

Amethyst Poetry / Writing Saga #6 / Those Who Dare Win

(This writing follows directly on from Writing Saga # 5 / Following the Lamb Whithersoever / the Holy Grail )

     …And the process? Whatever was that? The key to the strength which opened impossible places, which withdrew the sting of the offence of the truth from the stone of stumbling: drawing out the sword stuck in the offending stone and so tightly, no one could pull it out, what was that?

  Just as day springs from the womb of night, and the tender shoot from under the earth, so LIFE springs from the tomb of death – its beginning. So it was first the dark; then the light. First the seeming-nothing-there; then the ever-living knowing. It was a loss which came first; and a seeming-dying in it before you were lifted up, and free. From then on, out from your innermost depths, the rising up of unquenchable light in unspeakable joy, in LIFE forever and ever.

  It took patience. But those who dare win. For them the ease of the drawing of a sword from a stone. But they are as nothing: dressed in ‘rags,’ incomprehensible, unrecognizable, little thought of – least in the eyes of those all around about them – and certainly no ‘king’ in their own eyes; yet, strangely, fulfilling the dream of one who was and will be.

  We are not foolish to believe the unbelievable: giving up the life we cannot keep to gain the life we cannot lose: alive in ancient Avalon, timeless in Everland, true in our inner world of Annwn; for caught up in the turning then you were you in the heavenlies.

  Everland’s longed-for beauty it was still the prize of all them that for love of the truth were incredibly happy in their nothingness; they want for nothing and so they walk through every wall. . . .

         ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

         And God fulfills himself in many ways,

         Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’                        

                                                                                        

                                                                                                - Alfred Lord Tennyson; Morte d’Arthur

The titles of the next four ragged writings of Amethyst Poetry:

I Turned the Page

The Tides of Everland

The Treasury of a Day

The Gift of Four

A Moment...A Fleeting Dot of Time . . .

In all checkered places of the cutting back

Ascending stairs and steps to Everland

In the working backwards they were all around me

Those pictures of weighted things that fly.

In the painted vision of even the simplest thing

Came the entirety of the all in all 

Being there even for a moment and I was       

Through to the happening-breath of the Other Side

Immediacy in the taking in of life

The partition split in the instant

The curtain being pulled aside

And the running thing there inside the hard

Seeing through in this fleeting dot of time

I had wings to fly amidst the unravelling runes

Vaster, realer the feathered things there         

Greater than hard shadows of halting outsides

In the breathing instant the shining thing laid bare

And I too become taken of the breaking longing . . .

Its living part always reaching out towards you

Ever following you, seeing you pursue the swiftlight

Ever close to you, seeing you knew

The need of changing

And all that in the glimpse of one moment there

Upon the veiled steps and stairs of the descending

Bearings of the beautiful tastings of the love-gold

And the thing beyond you twisting its tearing edge

Deep inside you

Knowing you there, if you let it,  
The tearing thing, the freeing thing 
In the stairs of the pursuit        

The swiftlight in the knowing of you deep within

Bearings of the weight of a bushel of answers

Could you?

All branded oscilloscopes measuring uncharted waters

But to believe, who would be so foolish as to lose     

What you thought you knew?

Who would give a fig for a basket of feathers?

Or trade in their first lamp to join with the finders?

Out of Dry Ground

Still secrets hid which from ancient ages followed

From fragrant clasps encased in darkest night

Wreathed in mystery’s keep which only babes can open

Doves of an ivory tower wrest the serpent’s stolen truth

A life which sings will from an inner stone emerge

Out of dry ground the sweet refrain of every stinging thing

No beauty there that was not glimpsed through pain

The despised who saw it with heaven’s stone kept tryst

In every weeping valley low love hid a door of hope

For the hurting her bounty of light’s ‘inside out’

Those cheated of an earthly calm, would they find there, joy

And that, in truth, abundance rare awaited their reward?

In all unwanted gifts hid away the glory of the Giver 

Of Pandora’s box for selfish self’s desire, nothing there

In esteeming each the outer, of the inner gift were poor

The one we left, the good part, and life’s shaded joy

But who would see a harvest come of what we harboured

For those, who for love died a feast out of dry ground

Delight and an inner hidden wealth of death and glory

And Everland our home in heaven’s days on earth

  

The Ragged Writings of Everland

A green leaf . . .

Hard ripped from a bent twig

Yet sent flying

A rose bud . . .

Cruel plucked from a thorn bush

And taken deeper

My soul untouched is safe . . .

But that is not what it was created for

                                                                   

The Saga of Amethyst Poetry / Part Two: The Ragged Writings

 ‘The Ragged Writings of Everland:  A collection of poetic writing’

       A definition:  n. a 'ragged writing' is basically a poem rejected: being as it is an affront to the intellect, because the most used part of the mind can’t make much sense of it!

  An explanation: a piece of 'ragged writing' which upon first reading appears incomprehensible, will to the diligent searcher slowly render its secret treasure upon each subsequent reading; enlarging the faculties of the inmost being to taste and eat of a whole new kind of fare. If we will but let go the incessant demand of our intellect to understand something before we can enjoy it, we might develop the spiritual capacities that are within us instead – the ones which make us who we truly are – the exercise of which will bring a more satisfying reward than we could imagine.

      It is hard. But narrow a river and it will flow for you more swiftly. Over feeding the intellect has hindered the heart. Help a butterfly escape from its cocoon, and it dies. Its wings never develop.  It needed its struggle to fly.

    Read without wanting. Read as though being read, yourself. These writings are as looking-glass stones, reflecting back at you whatever you see in them. You could work them out, with some mental effort; or you could soak them in, with no effort at all; in both ways are treasures. Most of all you will discover, to your joy that you are given out of not demanding to understand.   

‘Everland:’

       A definition and explanation: Everland: the internal Land through which we ever journey onward, and always ‘further up and further in;’ her shores are as mystical as Avalon, and her waters as dark as Annwn in the elusive quest for the beyond; her interior as timeless and real, as heaven on earth.