living, moments, mystics, nature, poetry

The Light that Pervades All Things

Carmen Gray

“Whether you worship Christ, Krishna, Kali or Allah, you actually worship the one Light that is also in you, since It pervades all things.”

― Anandamayi Ma

The Light That Pervades All Things

by Carmen H Gray

Within you there is a light

It has a certain miraculous quality that gives it momentum

To traverse the stars

To change the course of any path

Simply by beaming

To act upon anything beyond itself

Creating dynamic evolution

You can find it in the strangest moments

Washing someone’s hair

Learning a language

Pausing to breathe

Noticing the layers in a single rose

Listening to the crickets chirping in the night

Or the frogs singing their chorus

Seeing yourself

Seeing others

In other words, living

Not just merely surviving

Lends itself to shining

The Light That Pervades All Things

hope, letting go, living, moments, poetry, time

Phantom Dog

Carmen Gray

Phantom Dog

by Carmen H Gray

Why does it hurt so much?

You having to leave?

Perhaps your existence is a metaphor

Your eyes mirroring all of the humanness

That we experienced in a certain set of years

A living/dying time capsule

God gave us such creatures to teach us

How to hold space

How to pause time and embrace

A lifetime of lessons

A dog’s life being a condensed version

Some creatures are here to fast forward

And simultaneously flashback

Our perception of an era.

letting go, living, moments, teaching

Teach

Carmen Gray

Screen Shot 2020-05-12 at 12.55.11 PM

Teach

by Carmen H Gray

I rushed to sort it all out: 14 years of 28 gone by

As I piled more things to the side for goodbye

There wasn’t enough time to go through it all

I glanced at the artwork, left lonely on the wall

I sighed and I conjured up all that I’d taught

And little nuances that each of us brought

To this space confined between four walls

And even beyond that, into the halls

I heard the sniffles with tears, the children who needed healing

I also heard laughter, the “hello, Ms. Gray’s,” while excitedly squealing

I packed it all up-those sights and those sounds

I headed outside to the gardens and grounds

Where the rosemary was named and the aloe was tended

Where the fig tree was climbed and fairy houses blended

Into the rocks, the acorns, and where the leaves unfurled

This is where little hands created imaginary worlds

And I kept the sadness locked up, not revealing

When my son saw me and asked how I was feeling

So I told him the school, his school, was going away

I glimpsed at his face, the boyhood cheeks gave way

To a chiseled, grown up profile

He looked at me with a smile

Though still lost in my thoughts, and feeling distracted

He gently said,

“Mama, just think of how many lives you’ve impacted”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ethereal, letting go, living, moments, mystics

I AM-NESS

Carmen Gray

“The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Am-Ness

by Carmen H Gray

 

I Am-ness is letting the whole

be made up of all Parts

The parts we wish to project

The parts we wish to protect

I Am-Ness is the absence of division

Or Duality

It is all knowing, all being, all light, all love, all truth

It is everything and nothing in the blink of an eye

It is the symbiotic receptacle of the space between space

It is loving, when it is hard to love

It is seeing from the pinnacle into the valley below

I Am-Ness is possibility that we are changing into reality

 

 

art, beauty, ethereal, hope, living, moments, mystics, Uncategorized

The Rich Deep Tones of A Cello

Carmen Gray

drawing.pearl

drawing by Carmen H Gray

The Rich Deep Tones of A Cello

by Carmen H Gray

I’ve heard it in my dreams

As if he called to me

His voice in that same living tone

Of her beloved instrument

The sound waves echoing from our distant past

An expanding ripple of spheres

That reach across time

Pausing to recapture

The rich, deep tones of a cello

That hold so many memories

She ordered resin today

The parentheses have had their moment

I feel the exhaling of one hundred breaths

 

 

 

ethereal, moments, mystics, time, writing

From A Dream

Carmen Gray

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”-Oscar Wilde

From A Dream

by Carmen H Gray

You and I, we made such vagaries of the mind

We called ourselves by unrelated names

And wandered into an altered world, where our ages

Were neither young nor old, nor anything in between

As if we were ageless, we were

I saw you writing and you watched me daydreaming in this distant place

I could not remember who I was anymore

As if I had disintegrated into no one, but everyone at once

And you were there to witness such an existence

What strange lives we have lived together

Thought I

 

art, ethereal, living, moments, mystics, nature

Truth Teller

Carmen Gray

owl

art & poem by Carmen H Gray

 

Harbinger of Truth

Night Scout

Spirit of the hidden realms

You called out

Before dayspring with its auspicious, tender light

Caught me, heedless in my faraway flight

Who? Who? You asked

And I heard the question

Though I found no origin

Surrounding my perception

What were you foraging?

So attentive to the starkness

A keen awareness to the rustling

Of flight wings in darkness

Harbinger of Truth

Night Scout leave-taking

Giving me pause

As dawn was breaking

Benediction with a farewell sigh

As you moved swiftly

Into the violet-gray sky

 

 

art, hope, letting go, living, moments, time

Dark Night

Carmen Gray

profile                                                     Art & Poem by Carmen H Gray

I wrote the poem below 25 years ago. Found it today rummaging through old things this morning and it inspired a self-portrait. Although I am quite sensitive/empathic, in all these subsequent years, but especially in the last 5 ones, I have learned how to shore up my psychic boundaries, practice self-care and self-compassion. This has created a firmer foundation for me to explore who I am and what I feel, apart from others around me. It has led me to shed the burdens that I have allowed others to place upon me. In other words, I have a better sense of me. I read this poem now and realize, I no longer feel these emotions. I absolutely can and do sense the grief and heaviness in others, especially I can tap into this during my reiki sessions with my clients. I hear the feelings/experiences that are present in their subconscious.  But, there is no need for me to take on another person’s healing process now. I am there to reflect it, but not to feel it for them. For my own healing unfolded, and for this I am grateful.

Dark Night

To be alert and eyes wide open,

Heart exposed, vulnerable organ that it is,

Is to be both cursed and blessed.

But it is the only way to truly be

To truly live, and see and feel and die.

As I witness sad souls beat down in this world,

My heart feels heavy with the weight of their sorrows

How insignificant it may be, that in my life

I am present when your restless soul seeks

The warmth of another, reaching, hands outstretched, searching, searching…

How common that I mourn for you

When nights are long and painful

The senses are heightened

For every smell is sickening

And even silence is too loud

How simple to share moments of despair

When a blanket of nothingness surrounds you

Groping, blindly for hope

Hope, hope…this is what will save us

Returning to our human condition

Sharing our dark night of the soul

 

immigration, living

70,000

Carmen Gray

70,000

by Carmen H Gray

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(art by children, ages 10 and 11, while staying at a respite center run by the Catholic church in McAllen, Texas)

70,000 is a neat number

Rounded up for sixty-nine thousand and something beyond fifty

Easily divisible by two

Until you keep dividing in half

Eventually you reach fractions of a whole

Those shards of whole parts

Are not just numbers

They are fractured pieces of a person’s soul

Disturbances in family fault lines

That refuse to lay dormant

You can see it in the drawings of the children

Who are crying, “¿Dónde está mi mamá?”

And in the exanimated eyes

That can no longer produce tears

Those quashed emotions inhabit

An exponential fallout

From this tidy number