John Muir’s Ecstatic Experience: The Sierra. Mountains holy as Sinai.

.

.

.

“Muir‘s view of the natural world is strikingly contemporary–a holistic vision of an intricately interconnected “Earth-Planet Universe.“ It is also deeply spiritual and essentially pantheistic. Muir introduces us to “plant people,“ “animal people,“ and in a passage from 1872 he muses:

.

.

The Sierra. Mountains holy as Sinai. No mountains I know of are so alluring. None so hospitable, kindly, tenderly inspiring. It seems strange that everyone does not come at their call. They are given, like the Gospel, without money and without price. “‘Tis heaven alone that is given away.“
.
Here is a calm so deep, grasses cease waving… Wonderful how completely everything in the wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sunshine is not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, windsong, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”

.

Muir, John of the Mountains, Ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938) page 92.

.

From Gary Snyder and Tom Killian: The High Sierra of California, page 16  

every page fills you with such beauty.

.

 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pain’s mill wheel – Rabindranath Tagore

.

.

.

SICKBED 5, by RABINDRANATH TAGORE  

.

November 4, 1940
.
Under this vast universe
pain’s mill wheel rotates,
grinds planets and stars to powder.
Sparks flash, scatter
suffering on every side,
ash-webs from annihilated worlds
permeating in an instant.
In the mills of oppression,
in cells of luminous consciousness,
pikes and knives clank,
wound-blood spurts.
The tiny human body—
infinite, its power to face pain.
In the assembly of creation and annihilation,
this small vessel of blood
offered to the Tantric circle
reels, drunken, rapturous.
The clay cup of the body fills
with incoherent blood, floods with tears.
Every moment unfolds unending
worth to consciousness, invincible.
The body’s pain-hallowed fire,
the offering sacrificed to ascetic acts of stars,
is incomparable.
Such enduring vigor,
compassion without fear,
indifference to death,
such triumphant processions:
assemblies trampling beds of flame
to find pain’s limits—
on a fevered, unnamed pilgrimage,
together, from path to path,
penetrating caves of fire, to find care’s origins,
provisions of unending love.

First Published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 23 #2

(Spring 2001)
http://www.kenyonreview.org/roth

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Earth’s crammed with heaven – Elizabeth Browning

 

.

.

.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

 

.

Elizabeth Browning

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I do not endorse any advertising. This is a free blog and I have no control over ads.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Poetry of Pain By Emily Dickinson

There is a pain — so utter

There is a pain — so utter —

It swallows substance up —

Then covers the Abyss with Trance —

So Memory can step

Around — across — upon it —

As one within a Swoon —

Goes safely — where an open eye —

Would drop Him — Bone by Bone.

∞

Pain—expands the Time

Pain—expands the Time—

Ages coil within

The minute Circumference

Of a single Brain—

Pain contracts—the Time—

Occupied with Shot

Gamuts of Eternities

Are as they were not—

After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone

This is the Hour of Lead

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons recollect the Snow

First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go

∞

Pain — has an Element of Blank —

Pain — has an Element of Blank —

It cannot recollect

When it begun — or if there were

A time when it was not —

It has no Future — but itself —

Its Infinite contain

Its Past — enlightened to perceive

New Periods — of Pain.

∞

The Master

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool,–
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

When winds take Forests in their Paws–
The Universe is still.

∞

For My Home Page, click here:  Welcome to my Weblog on Pain Management!