WALLED GARDEN TRANSLATIONS

The sun of truth rises unbidden, and with it sets the moon of learning. In this halt of just a week, to be is not to be, and to come is to go. - Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury For all that I know, that which I’ve learned, I am a moon that mirrors a distant fire: I watch the sun rise, but my reflected brilliance fades with the light of day. For all that I know, that which I’ve found, I am a rooster that crows in the early dawn: I turn toward the fire, but all my hallelujahs fade with the light of day. This is what I know:   As long as I am living the sun will shine, and the sun will shine when I am gone, and the moon will rise and the rooster will crow and the shadows will stir and the gardens will grow. For all that I know, or I suppose, I am a wildflower in a garden of shadows: I stretch towards the fire, but every morning glo...

I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. - Luke 10:19-20 (NIV) It is better, in this beehive, to be tailored in the truth of humility than underdressed in the lies of violence. This is no place to be naked and raving. Leave your strength at the door and put on the armor of lowliness. God will recognize your allegiance, and you will trample the heights of heaven beneath your feet.

This is how you are to bless.... - Numbers 6:23 (NIV) The grand design of the universe proceeds regardless of apologies and creeds, no matter what’s believed or not believed: that God exists precedes how God’s perceived and all the universe thus far perfected is God’s reality on us reflected. What good, then, if we separate the light into a thousand rays of wrong and right when there is truth in each ray we receive? I may not always know what to believe, but I believe that God’s expecting me to keep reflecting everything I see without distortion, judgment or rejection and faithful to the source of my reflection. God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great, and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy unbiased by thy aid or opposition, no matter what thy rank or reputation; God shine His face upon thee for thy favor and turn His face toward thee for thy peace regardless of thy service ...

Love is charity, and charity is giving with nothing to gain. Love is serenity, courage, wisdom, the considerations of change. Love is peace beyond understanding, a song in the silence, a calm in the storm. Love walks through the noisy street and delights in being a part of it. Love stands in an open field and listens to the song.

Was once a man could tell the difference, could see into the souls of fools: once was the kind of man who measured ignorance with ridicule, who magnified the flaws of every mote in his periphery with arrogance: but let the evidence speak for itself, just as it always does: “Saffron, my friend, what have you heard of it? I said Saffron, fool, what have you seen of it? You know its name, you taste it every day, but say just a word of it and you give yourself away.” Was once a man of quiet innocense and simple faith in everything that was in front of him, whose life experience confirmed what he believed, who had no cause to quarrel with the things he could not see, no arguments with those whose arguments defined what they denied, who simply was. “Saffron, you ask, what have I heard of it beyond its name, what do I know of it? I have it by me, of this I can be sure, and it is goo...

Being told we are made in the image of God, we imagine: the foot that walks beside, the hand that reaches out, the fingers and the touch and the change of place, the grace of one descending, the image of a man, the form of one who sits upon a throne with a face that shines upon us and words to gather round, with flesh and blood and a body to embrace. It is this God that we imagine, this God we wear around our necks, that leads to arguments and war, but I will believe there is a better God than this God of blind design, a greater God than mortals can conceive.

In time we are no longer testing the arguments that our experience will somehow make us stronger as if each pang of hunger itself were sustenance, as if the circumstance of age could make us younger. No more this vain pretending our skin gets tougher when we feel reality burn like the sun. We are born to suffer and bear our mortality; there will be no happy ending before this day is done. But this too is from the sun: a secondary fire cast from rippling waters, a flashing picture of the waters’ movement brushed upon the wall, and you start to see that everything is a mirror of a higher power of aboriginal light; But this too is from the sun: the bent reflection of passing souls on a dagger’s face whose verging angle and sharpened edge turn angels into devils, and you let your dagger talk to you, but it never tells you what is true or what is fa...