Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!
by Clare of Assisi

English version by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP & Ignatius C. Brady, OFM

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!
Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance!
And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself
      through contemplation!
So that you too may feel what His friends feel
      as they taste the hidden sweetness
      which God Himself has reserved
      from the beginning
      for those who love Him.

— from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works: The Classics of Western Spirituality, Translated by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP / Translated by Ignatius C. Brady, OFM

/ Image by Xavier Mazellier /

I especially like the Clare’s opening line:

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!

That could just as easily be a statement from the Buddhist canon. Think about this exhortation for a moment. What does it mean to place one’s mind before the mirror of eternity? The mirror of eternity is that which reflects everything back to us. To place the mind before it is to be utterly naked to oneself. Everything within our awareness is shown back to us, our faults and foibles, as well our victories and inherent goodness — all simply as it is. It is the unblinking view of our own heart. Imagine the steadiness, courage, and supreme humility required to truly do this. To witness our true self that openly, the ego and its constant editing of reality can’t come along.

Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!

A lot of religious language, particularly Christian language, talks about “glory.” The word is used so often that most people just skip over it as churchy filler language. But there is a reason the word “glory” keeps getting used. Glory is radiant, numinous light. Glory is that which shines. Glory is “brilliance.”

For genuine mystics, this light is not empty praise language — it is directly experienced. For the mystic, this light is perceived as being a living radiance that permeates everything, everywhere, always.

The sense of boundaries and separation, long taken for granted by the mind as the fundamental nature of existence, suddenly seems illusory, for this light shines through all people and things.

This is Clare’s “brilliance of glory.”

To “place your soul” in that brilliance is to allow the little self to be disappear into the large Self, like a lamp lost in daylight.

This is the radical path of the mystic, allowing that divine radiance to “transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead.”

I also want to point out the closing reference to “sweetness”:

So that you too may feel what His friends feel
      as they taste the hidden sweetness
      which God Himself has reserved
      from the beginning
      for those who love Him.

Those who lose themselves in the divine light in order to gain the light itself, experience — literally — sweetness on the tongue. This is the amrita of Hinduism, the ambrosia of ancient Greece, the wine of the Sufis.

When one enters the sacred ecstatic state, the sensory portion of the mind does its best to interpret the overwhelming bliss through the senses. This is why many mystics taste the most ethereal sweetness on the palette and at the back of the throat, accompanied by a warmth in the belly and heart.

That sweetness is not just a metaphor; it is real, and “reserved” for each of us, as we become an ever more intimate friend to the Friend.

Reflection, light, transformation, friendship, sweetness…

Recommended Books: Clare of Assisi

Francis and Clare: The Complete Works: The Classics of Western Spirituality	All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time	Sacred Voices: Essential Women’s Voices Through the Ages	Sacred Companions Sacred Community: Reflections with Clare of Assisi

Clare of Assisi Italy (1193? – 1254) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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The awakened heart
is the true church.

The Moon of Your Love
by Muhammad Shirin Maghribi

English version by David & Sabrineh Fideler

Not a single soul lacks
a pathway to you.

In every particle of the world,
the moon of your love
causes the heart
of each atom to glow.

— from Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, Translated by David Fideler / Translated by Sabrineh Fideler

/ Image by alicepopkorn /

When I first discovered this poem I instantly fell in love with it.

Not a single soul lacks
a pathway to you.

This simple statement is so profoundly healing to the questing human heart.

In a world that places so many demands upon us, in which we pile up our own countless goals and deadlines, it becomes all too easy to feel lost and separated from the Divine. But it is never so…

There’s no stone,
no flower —
not a single piece of straw —
lacking your existence.

The pathway is to simply and entirely recognize the divine existence already present.

We imagine Herculean efforts are required, isolation, smothering asceticism, travels to exotic lands. We forget that the holiest place we can discover is immediately behind the breastbone.

Every effort, in the end, is to reach exhaustion, until we are finally too tired to continue telling ourselves stories about our lives. Finally, finally we fall silent. Finally, we witness ourselves as we are.

What we discover leaves us speechless.

In every particle of the world,
the moon of your love
causes the heart
of each atom to glow.

Every effort, the entire pathway, leads to precisely one step: a step out of the way. That’s when real opening occurs, and it is effortless. The love and light already present blossom within the heart. And every atom, all the universe, is lit up with us.

(You think I’m just spinning another pretty story, don’t you?)

Recommended Books: Muhammad Shirin Maghribi

Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi	Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition	A Critical Edition of the Divan of Muhammad Shirin Maghribi

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Love and compassion are effortless.
The soul is exhausted by the effort
to stop this natural outpouring
of the living heart.

Sabbaths 1999, VII
by Wendell Berry

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.

— from Given: Poems, by Wendell Berry

/ Image by Mark Grant-Jones /

It’s been a while since we’ve had a poem by Wendell Berry. And, yes, maybe this poem is for a misty autumn morning, but it suits today just as well…

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing…

That’s the “long lesson,” the slow realization of a lifetime lived with attention: the deep satisfaction of simple moments. Grand experiences may serve as important punctuation marks to life, but it is only when we deeply engage with the gentle flow of small events that we come to know our lives. Remember, real magic is hidden; it is hidden in those quiet moments.

how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

And nature is our constant teacher and guide, again and again bringing us back to ourselves.

With the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.

When we walk well among the woods, with the quiet attention that comes only when self is left behind, we glide through the eternal moment.

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be.

And we just might come to recognize the Source of “all this” — right here, within this moment, within our own breast.

Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest…

Berry’s title tells us this poem is about the Sabbath. He understands the real meaning of the Sabbath. It is not the one day out of seven when one goes to church or synagogue. Sabbath is the living moment of sacred rest. It isn’t a question of how often we sit within a steepled hall. Until the mind quiets and comes to rest in the heart, we have not yet honored the Sabbath.

The image of the falling leaf, the reference to the day of rest, this also gently suggests something of death to us. The poet is walking through the woods in autumn and contemplating the how things end, how our own lives play out and come to a close, and there is a quiet contentment. We might find a fullness in that moment of awareness when we simply allow ourselves to be at rest in the natural rhythm of things. Death is not a horror or a source of dread but, in its right time, a strangely sweet yielding, a sabbath.

Whichever day of the week you read this, have a beautiful day of rest and contemplation!

Recommended Books: Wendell Berry

The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982	Given: Poems	Selected Poems of Wendell Berry	A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997	The Mad Farmer Poems
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Wendell Berry US (1934 – ) Secular or Eclectic

More poetry by Wendell Berry