spiritual poetry – Radiance Within

Wild Spirit

July 11th, 2025

In these post summer solstice days, the oak tree whispers reminding me of when I was a young girl on the brink of adulthood. During the summer months, I almost always went for a walk after dinner. On these walks, long after I had exited the neighborhood, sunset turned into twilight, and by the time I made it to the cornfields, star fire pricked the horizon and lightning bugs dotted and flashed among trees and across fields as cicada bellies vibrated and buzzed, and crickets stroked their violin wings.

After an hour or so, I was sweat-soaked, and the humidity curled my hair. But it didn’t matter. On the walk back, whiffs of wind scented with pine, cut grass, and strawberries made the air feel and smell heavenly. Gusts from behind reached through my arms wrapping my torso in coolness, giving me the sensation of being carried home.

Recently, my meditation under the shade of an oak tree brought back memories of those evening walks, and with a smile, I was reminded of the Greek myths I so loved reading back then. All those years, decades ago now, I was like the ancient Greek maidens encountering natural forces. Gods of the underworld, earth, sky, river, and sea were greeting me, filling me with exuberance for life.

I see now the truth of those stories, how the storytellers could capture the imaginations of so many people for millennia. Something inhabits trees, embodies gusts of wind. Something powerfully, purposefully, lustfully tears through cracks in the earth and thunders down from the sky. Magical forces drive clouds and swirl the water right before our very eyes.

Something grand, seductive, and full of desire dwells in the fields, forests, and waters. That something seeks us wholly. Impregnates us the way Zeus did Danae, Leda, and Alcmene. Takes hold of us and carries us away like Hades did Persephone.

Most of us haven’t given birth to demigods and queens. But I am confident that many of us have developed ideas and businesses, created roads, bridges, and buildings, written poetry and stories, nurtured relationships, children, gardens, and homes. We’ve baked pies, cookies, cakes, and casseroles. And how many times did intimate contact with the natural world inspire these creations?

Summer evenings, walking, lying down in the grass, leaning against trees, lingering as the light of day fades to darkness—my whole life, I’ve known that these are times charged with magic, splendor, and wonder.

Whether you sense God, gods, goddesses, spirits of creation, or the burgeoning human imagination communing with the overflowing abundance of life, you must allow yourself to be swayed. Your soul survives on nothing less.

But beware. The old myths are cautionary tales.

Mortals seduced by nature’s sensual spirit face punishment, alienation, exile. No one believes the mortal capable of communing with the forces of nature. Caught red-handed, unable to hide the shame, the child, barely able to handle the glory of consummation with real powers of the world, mortals suffer.

But the truth cannot be denied. The forces of the universe want us.

And who would we be if we had never ridden a cresting wave, buried ourselves in the sand, raised our arms and let the wind carry us?

And what wastelands do we endure when we always keep doors, windows, curtains, and blinds closed? What happens to us when we lock away our wildness?

I know that I have swallowed my yearnings many times. I’ve cuffed my wrists and ankles. Like the disbelieving fathers and husbands of mythical women, I’ve been afraid. By controlling what I swore to protect, I’ve trapped my own wild heart. Paid the heavy price of misery.

But even after all these years, the oak tree still whispers the story of the young woman on the brink of adulthood who followed her wild heart and found herself loved, supported, cherished by the world that bore her.

-Radiance Writer

July 11, 2025

Photo by Rajesh Rajput on Unsplash
Lettuce Leaf

July 27th, 2022

Have you ever held a leaf of lettuce up to the light of your kitchen window while it dripped into the sink after you rinsed it?

Have you ever taken a few moments to examine its ruffles of tissue and intricately woven veins?

The leaf in my hands is a vessel for streaming light and holding water. It has the potential for being so much more than what I plan to do with it.

What can I do? This living thing has caught me in a moment. It’s revealed its true identity. My vision is x-ray. I see what it is to capture light, to be a light being.

The image of an entire tree with roots, trunk, branches, and leaves is imprinted on a piece of lettuce. Held up to the light, it’s like a photographic negative or a blueprint artfully recorded on what will soon be my lunch.

And to think that such beauty, such an intricate network, can nourish, can be broken down and absorbed into another body, sustaining its life, my life.

I will dress my salad in humility and toss it with gratitude. I will ask forgiveness from what I must destroy because I seek to live, because I need to eat.

All I can do is notice. All I can do is open my eyes.

-Radiance Writer

July 26, 2022
Poetry Has a Place

July 22nd, 2022

The world needs the poetry of places, people, and passages. Lyricism, thoughts in verse, and whispered prayers bolster us against the machinations of life, to keep us from degrading into hollow images, like those in video games maneuvering at the behest of others, for the purpose of accumulating endless points.

We need the poetry of places, people, and passages because inside we are soft. We are real. We need to love and be loved. We need to care and be cared for. We need hugs and kisses and warm words and gentle gestures. We need beauty of thought, form, and substance. We need elevation and transcendence.

We need space for thoughts and feelings to meld into the quiet grandeur of perspective, meaning, purpose, the will to go on. Between the industrial, the marketable, the lucrative, the commercial, and the profitable, we need a balm, something to seal the hard, jagged cracks formed from our efforts to make it in this world.

We need the poetry of thoughts and deeds, words, dances, intricate forms, colors, and music. We need candles and bowls of water, skylights and stained glass, statues, icons, and mosaics, incense and chimes, high ceilings and arched portals.

We need muses, reminders of higher ideals and humanity. We need places that capture our imaginations and feed our souls, sanctuaries to nourish our dreams and heal our broken hearts and anguished minds. We need places to mark our passages, temples, churches, synagogues, mosques, open fields, forest canopies, and sandy beaches. Places to honor and elevate our fleeting, noble lives.

Poetry has a place wherever the silence is full, wherever depth of feeling and thought is palpable, wherever the human spirit is striving and thriving, wherever the colors are rich and multifaceted, clarified and true. Where people gather in solitude and in community. Where silence is sacred and all are reminded that the divine dwells within them. Where spirits of the departed linger whispering to us of inspiration, daring us to hope.

-Radiance Writer

July 21, 2022

Wild Spirit

Lettuce Leaf

Poetry Has a Place