Vol. 1. / Caught Up...

A man stands against the sun, a ring around his edges

A circling of intrinsic golden light

He moves softly forward, coming straight towards me

He doesn’t stop he goes on right through me

And out behind me on the Other Side

I turn around I see his back as he goes onward

I follow, drawn ‘forward,’ too:

(That which is backwards is forwards now.)

I caught him up – and caught up we two were one

A cloud, he disappears; I am on my own, but not alone

I turn not back again nor even turn around   

Pressing onward I went where he went

Following - if I could have seen him, but I couldn’t

And it was so and as it should be, though I didn’t know

Before me is a wood, and the sun shines around its edges

Earthly – the first few rows of trees seem brightly lit 

Invitingly – but they are full of their own light

I move – with arms outstretched I run toward them

Ever hopeful winged in delight, and barefoot free

Yet, made of hollow shells, dry branches do not greet me  

I follow on – I do not stay, I pass right through them

As though they were not there

Wood-caged people they are grounded in Earth.

In their own light, the trees not caught up, melt away.

Passed through them, I am out on the Other Side, alive

For them, I am sad: misunderstood I am all alone

For this lack of losing all how much is lost.

                                      *

( - from THE RAGGED WRITINGS OF EVERLAND: Vol. One)

Story: 21. ) The Two Sides of Things & Entertaining Angels / from A Book is Like a Sacred Isle . . .

(from new manuscript of short stories about books)

The Two Sides of Things 
& Entertaining Angels

  Leafing through a newly purchased secondhand book the other day I came across a sheet of notepaper, folded up several times into the shape of a bookmark. Maybe it had been used for a bookmark, I don’t know? I looked at it; then picked it up holding it a moment.

  Although I felt as if I were intruding I unfolded the lovely cream coloured writing paper and read what was written on it. There were only three words. They were handwritten, in red ink, in thin capital letters: ‘YOU ALREADY KNOW.’ That was all. Nothing else!

  ‘You already know . . .’ I read the phrase several times. When I personalized it, it felt good. So I toyed with the idea for awhile. This is what I came up with:

  I already know something! In that case, if I already know it, I am not missing it! And, if I am not missing it, it must be in me, already! So somewhere inside me I am already knowing something even though I don’t consciously know what it is!  

  I picked up the book again; and I looked at the two pages between which the ‘bookmark’ had been sandwiched. I noticed a small underlining on the left hand page, in the same red ink. The words underlined were: ‘the two sides.’  Inadvertently I closed the book. (When I later wondered what the context was, or what the sentence was that had those three words underlined in it, it was too late; the page unmarked I couldn’t find it again.) At once I put the two phrases together:  ‘You already know the two sides.’  

  Immediately, an amazing incident from my past came to mind, which illustrated the two phrases when put together; and from that spontaneous remembrance I worked backwards to understand more.

  In what we already know, are levels of meaning and value to learn more.  Ever deepening layers of knowledge and understanding can be found in everything; being revealed, or unveiled to us according to the depth of our desire to see and desire them. ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you…’ 

At base, at the most fundamental level of understanding, there are two sides, or two edges to everything. ‘Entrances’ are the easiest ways to understand these. A window can be looked through from two different perspectives; a door can be entered from two sides; a fence can be crossed from either side.

 If the two-sided-ness of things – their fronts and backs, their insides and outsides; even the very existence of opposites are both perfectly normal in the usual scheme of things in this ordinary world we live in, it shouldn’t be too great a stretch of the imagination to believe that there were two sides to reality as a whole:  ...That this world was one side of a two-sided entity. …That we live on one side and there was something else on the other. …And that if there were two sides to everything we can see, why could there not be two sides to everything we cannot see, which are making life in this world possible?

  In our thinking, most of us can see two sides to any argument; else, of course, there would be no possibility for debate.

  Somewhat confusingly I have always been able to see where the two sides of a debate were saying the same thing. I could never join the school debating club, for instance: I would always see the truth on both sides at the same time, and so I could never take sides, and so I wasn't wanted.

  Light, external and internal, makes possible two things:  by its absence or by its presence are two things: shadow, and ‘un-shadow.’ As external light shining on one side of anything creates a shadow on the opposite side of it, so internal ‘light,’ or understanding, does the same thing, creating ‘shadows’ in our minds where there is no ‘light.’ But the two are not separate they are just back to back. The two sides are joined by whatever separates them. Two-sided-ness is actually the property of one thing. People for instance are one thing, but they have a front and a back, an inside and an outside. This is all so terribly obvious and true that to talk about it seems perfectly crazy! But ‘imagination’ and ‘reason’ are not separate: they are simply the two sides of the same thing: there is no void, no gap between them.

  Whatever we can imagine, can exist; and does somewhere. Because we can imagine it, we can know there is something there which could give rise to the possibility of it. It was simply one side preempting the other; having ‘echoes’ of it, because it was really there.

  This invisible two-sided-ness, I know it not only because I have perceived it in my understanding: ‘in thy light we see light’ . . . but because I have actually seen it with my physical eyes.

  One day in spring, about ten years ago, I was travelling south to Kerikeri. And when I was driving through the south side of Kaeo, near the little church there, on the left, I saw the plain reality of what I am trying to describe and explain.

  Beyond me, on the far side of the little building, I saw a man step into this world. I saw half of a man as he was stepping from an invisible somewhere, into the visible here and now. He was looking straight ahead, across the road which was about two metres in front of him; so I saw the front right hand half of his head and body, and one leg come suddenly into sight as I was travelling towards him; then a moment later, he was all in this world.

  Though what I saw of the half of his body was only for a split second …he appeared to be walking at the normal speed of an unhurried man…what I saw is still indelibly etched upon my memory. I can see it now. It was nothing I could ever have anticipated, nor anything I could ever forget.

  Automatically I stopped the car to pick him up, to give him a ride to wherever he wanted to go; which was Kerikeri.

  If I am alone in the car I rarely stop to pick up a hitch hiker; especially if it is a man; but the curious thing was it felt like the most natural thing in the world to do at that moment. I felt a complete affinity with him. I knew he was an angel, in human form; in plain lower middle class clothes; and I was not afraid. He opened the passenger door and stared at the seat he was going to sit on. Underneath a sheepskin I had put there twenty minutes ago, before I left for town was the first draft of the beginning of my autobiography DAWNING. He stared at it; and with emotion: with much love and compassion, and with great joy; and as though he could see through the sheepskin, read the manuscript of the book in an instant, and affirm it with great delight.

  I was on my way to Kerikeri to post this ‘embryo’ of the book to my beloved friends in the United States. And given the fact that these dear people’s response to the book was going to be appalling, perhaps an angel had been sent to encourage me, that it was not ‘the end of the world,’ and that I was to keep on writing even if I kept on being rejected.

  Later when I felt like collapsing with grief over their comments, I remembered the angel, and his heavenly joy, and the tears flowing down his cheeks as he worshipped with raised hands; and which I had watched with real surprise. I was stunned that angels had emotions. But why not?  Why couldn’t they?  Now I wonder, perhaps he was not actually an angel, but rather a person who lived in heaven and who was sent from heaven. I don’t know? All I know is that he was definitely not of this world: he was lit by a light from beyond the world. His total understanding, and love, and his ability to know unknowable things, were not of the realm of this earth.

  I drove him to Kerikeri. Approaching the Waipapa junction I asked him which way he wanted to go. When he did not verbalize his reply, (this was when he just lifted his arms in spontaneous praise, and tears of love and compassion ran down his cheeks ;) I just drove straight on.

  When we got there, I stopped in the middle of the town; near to the Post Office. He got out, and walked discretely behind the car making as though to cross to the other side of the road; and then, he disappeared; I saw through the rearview mirror. And it all seemed perfectly normal. 

  He came from the Other Side of the curtain separating the spiritual world from the physical world. He already knew . . . everything . . . because he lived outside of time! This was at least the fourth incident in my life when I have been helped by angels who have appeared to me in human form.

  ‘YOU ALREADY KNOW THE TWO SIDES.’ …Our deepest longing is one side of the desire for that which we know not; and the consummation or the satisfying of that desire is on the other side. The two sides complement each other and fuel each other; creating in us a continuous ‘un-satisfy-able’ desire having its only possibility of fulfillment, elsewhere than in this world.

  When we have the sensation of already knowing something before we are told it, we can enjoy the fact that we are eternal beings, and have come from the Other Side, from beyond the constraints of time.

  And the cream coloured, folded paper ‘bookmark,’ that had led me on this long train of thought and reminiscence, I felt to put it back into the book in which I had found it. And that when I went to that secondhand bookstore next time, I would give it back or trade it for another. That ‘bookmark,’ inspiring me with its intriguing message, had given me an idea: I knew what I could do through books, too!

                                                  

                                                *

Vol. 1. ) Close to Me Now . . . from The Ragged Writings of Everland

Close to Me Now . . .

Close to me now the air you are that I breathe

With me still, your intimate presence . . .

Diffusing all through me, certain, enlarging

Filling all the yearning places in me – as the

Sweetness of the Amaranth – infusing me here

Making me, through only your essence in me, 

Most truly met . . . and found: and truly loved.

Story: 18. ) The Book that was an Island . . .

(from new manuscript of short stories about books:
A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight)


The Book that was an Island

  Idly I picked up a stone from beside me where I was sitting. A small, black pebble. I toyed with it in my hands awhile, deep in thought. The pebble was cool and smooth; mindlessly handling it was somehow comforting. A kingfisher flashed by. It shot from one side of the inlet to the other. It disappeared; leaving behind it a trailing image of blue and green. 

  After awhile something made me turn my head again, and I looked down at the place from where I had picked up the pebble. I replaced it. Beyond, about a metre or so away I saw a larger stone, roughly square-shaped, with a faint split down its centre, almost dividing it in half. It was a very unusual shape for a sea stone; and it reminded me of something. So I stood up, and went over to it. I lifted it from the ground to look at it more closely. The split was actually a line of white quartz.

  Help is never very far away. Suddenly a string of instantaneous images flashed a path through my midst like a kingfisher’s dive opening and lighting a hidden story to tell; the truth that was in me suddenly given shape and form; a body and a substance in which to express it. I was amazed. I smoothed the book stone, and gave thanks in my heart. Gently I returned it to its place and walked on down the shallow inlet towards the beach. Walking along the sandy shore I noticed the few sea-tossed stones scattered there, and the strange sequence of images I had fleetingly seen; of people being like ‘pages’ and books being like ‘islands.’ After awhile the images fell into an order, and made sense: infused with love. When I got home I wrote the story. (It was from this that the idea came for the poem or ‘ragged writing:’ A Book is like a Sacred Isle.)

  It was in the beginning. And in the beginning was a vast sea. Up from the midst of the sea I saw an island appear. The island was one great stone made of many pages which had a lived history written within them, and so they lived. The pages had been gathered into one place. Sewn together they had become the book which was the island, which lived.

  Time passed. The island grew. For another whole set of pages was found. These were gathered and sewn together as the first were, and they were added to the first which then became one single book. And the book was as a mighty rock, a sacred island, and became a stone of stumbling in the world, and a rock of offence.

   In time an explosion of light shook the world. In the fiery light the island was split, and divided, and multiplied; and became as millions of tiny islets which went into all the world. Each of the tiny isles were as parts of the book that was an island; and they were people.

  The islets began to understand their pages; and they were very pleased with their understanding. The more they thought they knew and understood of the history of the world written on the pages, the more they were separate and the sea increased around them and they were further away. They did not know that they could never really comprehend it.

  The more they studied it the more they gathered themselves together and became separate from the world; for the islets unconsciously measured everything by their knowledge. Wherever their measure was their own knowledge, there was not love. So the world filled with millions of tiny islets that held tightly to their own knowledge, and wouldn’t let go.

  Time passed. The sea grew. The world grew. Some of the islets had learned in the explosion of light the true way to know their book – by letting it go:  so that it could ‘go!’ Their pages were full of the energy of love: and light. They had learned this ‘back-to-front’ way to understand their book, and they were no longer separate: bridges went from them across the sea into the world.

  Now there were two forms of islets in the sea. Those which clung to their knowledge, their light was dim. But those which released their knowledge, and let it go for love; their light was bright and shone as a lamp all around about them.

  People and the ancient history Book, which are understood by the mind alone are only half seen, and limited; but those understood with the inner spirit of love are seen more, and are limitless; but, it takes a miracle for it to happen.

  It could be that miracles happen if one probes and questions the boundaries of one’s world: believing that what lies beyond its horizons is really there and waiting. The doorway is real because we know it is there. The haunting is real, too; for there is ‘an unsatisfied desire’ in us, ‘more desirable than any other satisfaction.’  (C S Lewis)

                                               *

Clear as Glass . . . and See-Through in the Light . . .

     They are all shining now the crystal wine glassed on our Welsh dresser. I suddenly felt this morning that I was to dust the dresser, beginning with the top shelf; and ending there! I washed a dozen delicate glasses in hot soapy water. Now they sit back up on the dresser positively beaming with shining light and delight. The sight of them has made me happy and as light as air! It is like I have been washed and polished, too!

    Every natural thing I do speaks to me of its spiritual counterpart and teaches me of my inner life. It is not something that requires any effort it just comes to me. I am always being taught . . . we all are, if we want to be.

     I sit now on our pale blue painted verandah, on our pale blue covered sofa, and rest. I am watching a strange green caterpillar creature on one of the purple candle flowers growing through the balustrade in front me only half a metre from my face. Its movement so slow it is almost imperceptible; but overnight it has moved a massive distance of twenty centimeters from one flower to the next. I cannot figure out which is its head end and which its tail. But as it now seems to be drinking from one of the little flowerets, perhaps I have discovered its head end!

     Much of my life seems to be upside down, or back to front . . . my path one of losing knowledge to gain it . . . and of not knowing something in order to know it . . . inner-life being given me as imperceptibly as breathing.

     And in all this, I am constantly being misunderstood by my friends . . . what is light to me is darkness to them . . . and our fellowship now is only in pleasant discussions about the weather.

     Although going unnoticed I am always moving from one level of understanding to the next; and it is only, and always in decreasing.

     Below the verandah is the driveway. Fine gravel with weeds and grass growing in patches and going un-sprayed . . . all living things are beautiful to me, even the weeds.

      The driveway is dappled now with sunlight trying to find its way through the trees. It is always carpeted an amber-brown colour from its sprinkling of fallen leaves from the huge pohutakawa tree leaning over it.

     This area of the driveway is an afternoon’s activity place for our five hens. Here they scratch and peck in the sunshine, and fluff out their feathers, digging out little shallow sitting places beside the hedge at the edge of the drive. Here they bathe in the dry dust and make themselves clean.

     I, too, bathe in my own dust and it also makes me clean: seeing myself as I really am: totally nothing and scum in the eyes of the world; and yet the more I see that, the happier I am . . . made free in seeing my own dust.

     I look up. The sky above matches the colour of the verandah, exactly . . . and down it bends . . . and gathers me beneath its soft protective wings . . . as a mother hen does caring for her little children. And I am loved and comforted . . . and lifted so free I rise again with my mother the Sky. And more in Heaven: Heaven is more in me; and I laugh, and dance on tiptoes inside me.     

         

                                                             *

I haven't disappeared, completely!

I haven't disappeared completely!  I have been busy working on other writing projects...plus we have had a busy time in January with lots of family visiting and various events happening...and in New Zealand it is our summer holiday time here...and things are more relaxed. I have enjoyed reading a few fascinating books on the pale blue sofa on our matching blue verandah...immersed in the warmth of summer skies and the serenading of the cicadas...they are almost deafening at times here! 

 I have been revising a book which I originally wrote in 2011....LITTLE BOOK.  A book not of this world, and therefore incomprehensible to it. 

 I live a lonely life writing books no one wants to read! But I am accustomed to being invisible and I am anything but lonely inside...within me, my life is full to the brim! ...and overflowing with love and joy and excitement in being an integral part of the work and purpose of God in the Earth.

 I am learning to move across the boundaries and share the Light I am given of him...and in new and exciting ways that people in the world can easily understand.

 (I will continue the book about books....A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE....but I am having a break from it for awhile.)  

Story: 1. ) Compassion / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A Book about Books...

        

       
         Compassion 

  I have just finished reading a book, a biography, about a famous writer and author whose checkered life, at first, filled me with dismay, and at times I wondered what on earth I was doing reading a book about such a perverse character. But I continued to read, fascinated. The more I read, the more his life was revealed to be truly weird and even repulsive in places, but his writing was utterly beautiful; astonishingly fine English. But the more I read the more I discovered compassion being worked in me, and genuine love for this troubled and tormented man. Towards the end, at the description of his dreadful death, I cried; and I was sad that the book had come to an end and there was no more to read of this utterly complex ‘nearly-great, but fatally flawed man.’    I realized the experience of reading this book had been important in my life. It had taught me not to be afraid of coming into contact with things I consider ‘strange.’ I saw that the good in a person would always balance out, even cancel out, for me at least, all the bad in them; further, the complex contrast made their good aspects, truly shine; just as stars shine only in a black sky.
  Through reading this book I recognized that there were preconceived opinions in me, and that I didn’t like them, and I didn’t want them in my life. The book’s effect on me was that I was taught more passionately, not to prejudge, anything.
  I realize now how very deeply I wanted to be rid of judgmental opinions, and to have a pure heart that found no cause for the rejection of any fault in any person.
  What treasure I would have missed out on had I not persevered, and read this wonderful book! Never let me be afraid of a challenge to change!
  It is not those things we want to know that help us the most and reveal what we’re after, but those we don’t want to know and turn from:  the real treasure was where we hadn't looked for it before!

                                                           *

This is the first anecdote for Part 3:  the prose section of:  A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight:  a book about books; by Judith Evans Deverell.  Scroll forward for the next anecdote in this prose section of the book. There will be approximately 20 anecdotal sketches in this section.

Writing Saga # 30 / The Lonely Poet & The Bookmark Project / LOVE POETRY? FREE BOOKMARK!

  

The Lonely Poet

The breeze that lifts the autumn leaf

And bends the silent flower stem

Tears from my midst the finished page

That cannot see what it will be

But joined with life’s own rifling wind

Will write within the heart it rends

   The Bookmark Project:

   I have been writing for a long time now, or so it seems to me, and getting nowhere. My writing sits inside my laptop year after year and there it stays. I felt that I had so much to share; but now wonder if anyone wants it. Scribbled insights in gifted thought and heart discoveries flow out every day, both in prose and in poetry; but I wonder how I could possibly be a gift to people if I didn’t give.

   One day last week while I was fossicking around for some scrap of paper to mark my place in a lovely book I am reading . . . ‘The Art Spirit,’ by Robert Henri, I suddenly saw what I could do to revive my joy in life again. I could make poetry bookmarks! Real bookmarks!  I could paint slim pictures, overlay them with my writing, and give them away . . . putting them in public places where people can help themselves to one or two. Not everyone has turned to Kindle type machines. There are still many people who actually enjoy reading “really-real” books!

   So that is what I am beginning to do; and ‘THE PLACEMARK POEMS’ are flowing out day by day.  
   I have figured out how I can mass produce them myself at home; the money will come, from somewhere; and I am excited about having a “hands-on” physical project to do. It will promote the love of “really-real” books, and reading, and most of all spread an interest for poetry in a society that has largely forgotten it, or relegated it to something distant and inapproachable. I love art and design, and making beautiful things; and I love giving.

   So, watch this space!  …I’ll post photos of the bookmarks I design in two or three week’s time.  Give and you’ll never walk alone!

                                   LOVE POETRY?  FREE BOOKMARK!

Please feel free to contact the author, Judith Deverell, with any encouragement; her email address at the moment is via:   arielaevans@gmail.com

(Poetry/ Vol. 1. ) Breathing Heaven

from THE RAGGED WRITINGS OF EVERLAND



Breathing Heaven

By myself I can write, and write the dead thing

Alone I can follow leads, and take the wrong one

Destitute I can look for gold, and find only a fool’s

But when I breathe I am in the centre of your will

With you one hundredfold . . .

Not alone: doing always my appointed thing

Breathing – and in every breath I can know I am with you

You give it to me, no one else, you do it for me  

Breathing – and in every breath I am in the right place

Breathing, breathing heaven, there I do no wrong

I can ask for understanding, and chose my own

I can hope for knowledge, and take the wrong kind

I can make a decision, and it can be quite out of line

But when I breathe, I am in the centre of your will

With you in your perfect life a hundredfold . . .

Breathing heaven! 

In the happening-life of the in-and-out of air:  found! 

(Poetry/ Vol. 1. ) Immortal Wound . . .

Ever Present

The immortal wound it had always been there

Throughout every age, throughout all of time

Through the entire universe it is there: the pinning pivot

Turning dead living toward the source of ever living wine  

Through my every portal the heavenly strike

The dividing smite, the flash of light rending me asunder

Wounded of a thorn in flesh, and immortality for death

The price, the pivot of life in spirit and in truth is bliss

           

Way of inner life: the fleshly wounding of me to see

Way of inner delight turning me upside down to know

Precursor of abundant joy, ever there my lively thing 

Pierced in and of mortality ever living immortal wound

(Poetry/ Vol. 1. ) A Pearl Feather

If found a gift

If found a gift this thorn in flesh

Then life’s glory was for ever

My turning thing, the thing I treasured

Then joy and a pearl feather

If beginning in water and ending in wine

In the midst and all the way through divine

Then was the wind wine, the wine rain:

The writings of an only daughter

If found of love in being made of love

And in the thick never more or less

Then this, my river and my ink my breath: 

All cradled life and a pearled feather

The Golden Tree

A twirling stair is in the tree

I see what I cannot see

I am taken down, and downward, more

As though I was heard in the awakening deep

In the roots of me in the golden tree

The puzzle below, in long lines of weighted texts

Never fully fathomed

Was forming beneath in patterned structures

The root of all things . . .

As many wisdom lines below

As there were knowledge strands above 

Those that keep the upper part alive

Standing below unseen . . .

           

That I see no base to what I stand on

Other than Love; invisible and plain . . . 

Just as I cannot see beneath the ground

The roots of the tree, but know they are there:

LIFE . . . it was all in believing: 

And my branches watered!  

The Inner Arms

On the waiting side is peace:

Resting 

On the hoping side is strength:

Believing 

The arms are underneath:

Everlasting 

Standing on that water is life:

Bearing 

Landing on that height is joy:

Being held 

The arms of the embrace above:

Loving me without ceasing  

Forever

Where falling I am found:

Standing 

Where the lilies feed:

Lowered 

The everlasting arms are in me:

Holding me without ceasing

Forever . . .

[ read backwards : read forwards ]