A Responsibility to Awe

[Lisa Walford]

The days are slowly turning toward night. With the Autumn Equinox now a few days behind us, I awaken to dark mornings and can no longer rely on the sun to get me started. These early hours are rich with quiet and stillness.. My transitions into pranayama and meditation come more easily. I find myself welcoming this next phase of deepening. We also passed through the Jewish High Holy days, often referred to as the Days of Awe. Here are the contributions I made over the last several weeks.    

This first one, Rebecca Elson was an astronomer and writer.  Her most noted published work is called A Responsibility to Awe. She died young, at 39. Perhaps it was in studying the cosmos, in observing the galaxy, in looking at a star filled heaven that she found her awe.  I like to read her poems several times, and, when you read them out loud, the cadence gives you time to absorb Rebecca's mystery and mastery. 

Join my next Wednesday for Pranayama from 7:30 AM - 8:30 on YogaWorks live stream. 

Dark Matter II - Rebecca Elson 

In this, our galaxy of human ways

Each of us, point-like, luminous

Bends the path of those whose lives we touch.

But there is something more.

That keep us circling a common centre,

Stops us spinning off into the void.

 

You feel it in an unexpected pull

A sudden swerve of thought, mid-stide:

The deep well of almost weightless memory.

The dense body of a passing god.

 

Evolution

We are survivors of immeasurable events,

Flung upon some reach of land

Small, wet miracles without instructions,

Only the imperative to change.  

Rebecca Elson, A Responsibility of Awe

Fall Song - Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere

its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply

in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island

of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

- except underfoot, moldering

in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.