Love of the Autumnal

 

As noted last time, recent reading has featured the works of John A.T. Robinson (Honest to God and The Human Face of God). Near the close of the latter work, he writes:

“‘Who is Christ for us today?’ I have suggested elsewhere that the gospel passages with peculiarly compelling power for our generation are those, like the Sheep and the Goats just alluded to, the walk to Emmaus or the final appearance of Jesus by the lakeside, which ‘tell of one who comes unknown and uninvited into the human situation, disclosing himself as the gracious neighbour before he can be recognized as Master and Lord’. In this, as in other respects, our thinking today has, I am convinced, to begin ‘from below’ and move from immanence to transcendence, from relationships to revelation, from the Son of Man to the Son of God, rather than the other way round.” (p. 239)

     A few pages earlier, Robinson asserts that “the starting-point is the transformation of human relationships” and that this comes into play as we engage anew the great mythic themes, as we 

“relate atonement to experience—justification, sanctification, sacrifice, ransom, satisfaction and the rest… What do we mean in terms of actual human experience by saying that ‘in Christ’ there is perfect (?) freedom, complete (?) release from fear and self, no (?) condemnation, final (?) victory over sin and death, unconditional (?) community, a new act of  relation, etc., etc.? How do we make real what the dimension of transcendence adds in this realm, what openness to grace means, or to the prevenient love of God, or to the power and fellowship of the Spirit? It is from ‘the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings’ in the present that the Christian has to start—and then go on to speak of these in secular rather than in religious terms. In the process he may—or he may not—be able to refer back to the myth or theories of ‘the’ Atonement in such a way that men say, ‘Oh, that’s what that meant!’” (p. 232, 233). 

     In this passage, Robinson footnotes with a recommendation to consider also the work of Rosemary Haughton, and this prompted me to pick up a volume already at hand: The Passionate God. Indeed, Haughton extends this project of finding the transcendent themes in everyday life, particularly relating the incarnation to the experiences of “romanticism.”

“The other thing about Romantic love which could only have sprung from Christian roots (however little the gardeners of Romance realized this) is that the doctrine is essentially dynamic. It is about an energy that smashes through the surface of everyday awareness and makes possible an exchange of spiritual power and knowledge which not only penetrates the lovers through every aspect of body, mind and spirit, but reaches far beyond them to transform other relationships and the very aspect of the material world. It is clear, also, that it does not come from the lovers but ‘enters’ into them, and having done so it demands to be used, to be given and taken, to act and affect, to change and be changed. It discovers its meaning in the response to it; it can only be known in being given.” (p. 47)

The poignant beauty of turning and falling leaves in this autumn often tilt and whirl with these wounds and wonders of transcendence, incarnation, transformation, death and resurrection…

Deep Down Things

      This post is mostly a book/author recommendation along with an encouragement to continue asking the important questions, and even to live into religion deep down. Today, looking outside, we witness the change of seasons, possibly a reminder of shifting world views affecting even our reach toward God. Some leaves must fall, and their full lives, like ours, show forth the beauty and promise of transformation. 

      During the manifestations of late summer and early autumn, I’ve also been turning the pages of works by John A.T. Robinson [1919-1983] beginning with Honest to God (1963) and continuing into The Human Face of God (1973). His writings give me support in moving further with the themes that feel most significant. For example, the notion I call “resonance” connects with a primary focus he makes in Honest to God: “a number of things have unaccountably ’rung a bell’… if one is to retain one’s integrity one must come to terms with them.” To elaborate this resonance, he notes that “three [texts]…  have since proved seminal” (pp. 19, 21). These he names: Tillich’s Shaking of the Foundations called “The Depth of Existence”, Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, and Bultmann’s New Testament and Mythology. Robinson explores the difficulties humans encounter in finding words to express the inarticulate; grasping at a shape-shifting reality proves so difficult:

Robinson asserts that to be honest to God is to persist through the fog, to refuse to surrender to a superficial view, and to plumb into the heart of matter because “God is by definition, ultimate reality” and “’the ground of our being’” (p. 29, referencing Tillich). Robinson further explores into the dominant but too-limiting view of God as a supernatural being in heaven. He shows that this perspective was considered “the great enemy of man’s coming of age.” This was the idea of God that they [Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and others] 

“must ‘kill’ if man was not to continue dispossessed and kept in strings. Few Christians have been able to understand the vehemence of their revolt because for them he has not been the tyrant they portrayed, who impoverishes, enslaves and annihilates man. Indeed, for most non-Christians also he has been more of a Grandfather in heaven, a kindly Old Man who could be pushed into one corner while they got on with the business of life. But the nature of his character is here secondary. What is important is whether such a Being represents even a distorted image of the Christian God. Can he be rehabilitated, or is the whole conception of that sort of a God, ‘up there’, ‘out there’, or however one likes to put it, a projection, an idol, that can and should be torn down?” (p. 41)

So, given the confrontation with the fallen leaves of the lost idea, what must we do? Robinson very helpfully names and elaborates the “task”

• “to validate the idea of transcendence for modern man” (p. 44)
• to affirm the existence of “a supreme Person, a self-existent subject of infinite goodness and power, who enters into a relationship with us comparable with that of one human personality with another… the existence of such a Being as the creator and most sufficient explanation of the world as we know it.”  (p. 48)
• to live forward “a view of the world that affirms this reality and significance in personal categories … that God, the final truth and reality ‘deep down things’, is love.”  (p. 49)

Living with Unknowing

     Last night’s dream must’ve figured from recent readings (especially Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, translated by Jan Van Bragt) and doings (particularly planting maple trees whose roots were wound far too tightly inside far too small containers, much too restrictive for the continuous development essential for ascension). The dream featured folks playing a sort of game where individuals attempted to articulate words that yearned toward but not quite able to reach into sufficient meaningfulness. Perhaps the divine purpose within the activity meant to enjoy the spirit of the attempt without getting trapped by the demands of clarity and rational thought. Nishitani seems to lean into such notions, including the attempt to “prehend,” the attempt to grasp or lay hold of:

“But when the concept of substance, which was supposed to express the selfness of things, and the concept of subject which was supposed to express the selfness of the self, strike against nihility at their very ground and are there negated, they make a leap forward onto a field where the things and the self they were out to prehend manifest their selfness. This means that, on the field of nihility, neither things nor the self are objects of cognition and, hence, can no longer be prehended or expressed conceptually (as logos). They are no longer determined either as substance or as subject. We seem no longer to be able to say ‘what’ they are. . .   With that, the existence of things and of the self are both transformed into something utterly incomprehensible, of which we can no longer say ‘what’ it is.” (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 136)

     Looking out into the tree (whose colors transition between matter and air, my reflections wander into the poem that’s held a favorite position for over a decade. Antonio Machado in “Llamo a mi corazon” penetrates into the garden with the “viento” which I consider as holy spirit that wafts along dreams and visions, that whispers its blessings and demands upon the responsive heart and soul. 

     The full poem with Robert Bly’s translation has been treated in previous posts including Distilling Distraction: Contain the Longing (Oct 4, 2014); Mining the Resonant Field with Mantras & Story Moments (Nov 4 2016, including a link to a video in which I recite the poem and give brief commentary); and Winter Containment (Feb 3, 2022).

     My experience today with Machado’s marvelous poem owes much to the remarkable writings of Mark C. Taylor (see previous blogs, most recently Planting a Tree Oneself ), Nishitani (just cited above), and works noted in other recent blogs. Especially, I have gratitude for a responsive shift to the closing of this poem. Usually the emptying of the garden feels almost heart-breakingly poignant (“Mi corazón sangraba”) as the wind takes away the waters of the fountain, the yellowed leaves, and the withered petals: 

          Me llevaré los llantos de las fuentes,

          las hojas amarillas y los mustios pétalos.

          Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba…

          Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto?

Now I’m thankful that a somewhat lighter possibility flits through. Perhaps as Nishitani indicates, the field of emptiness promises a marvelous transformation beyond the too-tightly contained self. The emptied garden makes a space brimming with the hope of movement into “the field of ecstatic transcendence…” (p. 151).

A Woodland Valentine

7:19AM February 14, 2026

“Where else but in nature do we learn to overcome nature and thereby become our humanity—our finite, open-ended transcendence?” Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, p. 231.

     The heart songs offered in forests and woodlands come freely every day. Their blessings enter the window above my desk as well as all windows around our home and perhaps even better when walking amid the oaks and maples. Harrison’s book enriches these experiences with his elaboration on the words and representations articulated by historians, story tellers, poets, and visual artists who have ventured into forests across many lands and ages. One, of course, is Henry David Thoreau. Harrison notes: “The woods do not contain the knowledge that Thoreau seeks by going there; they do, however, uncover the habitual hiding places of the self, leaving it exposed to the facts of life,” p. 222.

February 14 2026

Exploring woodlands through the lens of John Constable’s paintings, particularly Study of a Trunk of an Elm Tree, Harrison furthers an understanding of logos:

… the trunk of the elm tree…stands there as the embodiment of something that has come to appearance, that has emerged from the earth that somehow gives itself over to representation. The tree and its encircling forest, the patch of open sky and its sphere of illumination on the floor of the clearing, appear in Constable’s study in what one might call their pregivenness. The phenomenon is always pregiven, the human presence is that to which it is given. Expressed otherwise, the phenomenon takes its stand within a fundamental relation, or correlation, that binds together the human essence and the self-disclosure of the phenomenon. This relation is logos. Logos is the ‘word’ that keeps silent in the artwork by disappearing into the presence of the phenomenon.

We must go further and say that this fundamental correlation underlies the correspondence between soul and landscape which Constable’s paintings strive to evoke. Constable’s devotion to the light, tone, and atmosphere that pervade a landscape and imbue it with a mood that is like a fusion between human feeling and nature’s appearance—this devotion to the emotional modalities of the chiaroscuro indicate the extent to which, for Constable, human presence in the world belongs most intimately to nature’s manner of being. ‘Painting is but another word for feeling,’ he declared, and feeling is but another word for the relational bond—the logos—through which nature comes to presence in the phenomenon. (p. 208)

This commentary contributes to my sense of the possibilities of photography involving these woods.

     Harrison also meditates on the abundant giving from the woodlands through several poets, especially A.R. Ammons, John Clare, and Andrea Zanzotto. Poignant are the revelations from seasonal expressions shown by forests in relation to longing and loss. Profound are the gifts that flow from fallen leaves covered in snow.

Respect for the Holy

“There has been no greater loss to modern Western civilization than the loss of access to the sense of the numinous, the holy, which necessarily results from the loss of access to the inner worlds and [also results from] the exclusive concentration on the external, natural world” (Kathleen Raine, The Inner Journey of the Poet, p. 142).

     After finding its way onto one of my bookshelves almost five years ago, this treasure from Kathleen Raine somehow about a week ago found its way into my hands. Perhaps the time lapse was because readiness to take it in took awhile to develop. During the reading, the text has been resonating, radiating through to the heart, and generating almost as much heat as the hundred-degree temperatures outside. 

     Raine’s work features the reclaiming of the tossed-out holy land. Her expertise on Yeats and Blake provides the scaffolding for building an increased consciousness that might be strong enough to struggle through today’s dominant culture which neglects the holy resulting in the Waste Land. Raine references the harsh portrayal in T.S. Eliot's poem and contrasts its dystopian view with works and vision of selected poets and artists. 

     She elaborates the foundation offered in the art of Blake and Yeats especially through interweaving with works by David Jones’ (Anathemata and Parenthesis), the art of Cecil Collins, and poetry, particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gerald Manley Hopkins, and Edwin Muir. This structure affirms the unique selfhood of each person, individually bearing the mark of the divine, and still integrating with nature and with tradition. 

“There is a curious convergence between Hopkins and Blake, both of whom opposed to the materialist view of nature the more ancient—and also more modern—view of each creature as an unique and distinct impulse of life; ‘their habitations/And their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joys’—as Blake says” (p. 109).

The divine mark, the implanted image finds vital nurturance through the imagination. Considering the work of Cecil Collins, Raine asserts that the world of Imagination is 

“not imaginary—on the contrary, since the world of Imagination is the supremely, specifically human universe, the ‘kingdom’ proper and peculiar to humankind, which we alone inhabit, it is the most real of all worlds. The human world is above all an invisible world of thoughts, feelings and imaginings, experienced not by the body but by the soul. That world does not belong to nature, nor can it be known or measured in natural terms, being of another order, differing from the natural order not in degree but in kind. The inner kingdom has laws of its own, forms of its own, communicated only through the reflected images of painting, music and poetry. . . It is of the very nature of human art to make perceptible the invisible world of the Imagination…the expression of that inner order, of the structures, the energies, the living presences within the psyche” (Kathleen Raine, The Inner Journey of the Poet, p. 137).

     While the gift from the Source resides in each individual, access to it is not automatic. The structure needed for nurturing imagination includes developing intimate relationships among nature, knowledge, and love. The dominant culture of today (certainly in my experience) highlights the scientific, the rational, and the material. My academic program and professional survival depended (at least to the .01 level of significance) on learning quantitative statistics and empirical research. How in the world can we expect any less dedication and rigor if we wish for capacity in spiritual regions, in soul space, in heart land?

     My plans are to explore possible ways for such development in coming days.

On Chill Rain, Cutting, and Moving Inside

We celebrate, of course, the spring rains, especially when softly falling, slight breeze. We share into a deepened sort of joy, the kind taken down to sense life force even alike the newly opened daffodils bowing, bent into the crossed, lifeless stalks. Also, while reluctant to cut, some cheer comes through the movement inside. 

We might note some parallel here with Samuel Terrien’s Job: Poet of Existence. His introduction cleanly asserts the direction of the book. 

“The poet of Job did not attempt to solve the problem of evil nor did he propose a vindication of God’s justice. . . he not only takes his place among all those who suffer, fighting with the incomprehensible forces of evil in the noce oscura, but he also can speak to all sufferers an authentic word of comfort, begetting in them the virtue of serenity over woe. . .

And we who read Job may likewise find a gain in the loss of self-sufficiency. ‘As pain that cannot forget,’ wrote Aeschylus, ‘falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’” (p. 21-2). 

Terrien proceeds to take us through the entire text of Job, just enough commentary along with amplifications from scripture as well as contemporary literature, so that the Deus Absconditus, the ineffable, the mystery surpassing human grasp, eases somewhat through the mist, unsurprisingly by the grace of love. Thus, the touch of comfort, the enlightening of peace. The gift of this text can be sampled in a passage taken near the conclusion as Job, after so much talk and rebuttal, finally goes almost mute in response to the Voice proceeding from the whirlwind.

In the presence of the holy, Job could not speak. ‘To make the relation to God into a feeling is to relativize and psychologize it. True relation is a coincidentia oppositorum, an absolute which gathers up the poles of feeling into itself’ [Terrien, p. 242; quoting Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber, The Life of Dialogue].

 

Softer Love, Subtle Tone

Graying skies with yellow-browned leaves, many down, allow the softer love of shadows, subtle tonalities, layers above common horizons, slowing, looking long, erasing space and time. 

“There is an unbearable and unstoppable energy at the heart of the cosmos that is relentless, despite billions of years of cosmic life. This yearning for wholeness is integral to the unfinished process of evolution because it is an ultimate wholeness that exceeds the human grasp. God is the unbearable wholeness of being, the unrelenting dynamism of love, pushing through the limits of matter to become God at the heart of this evolutionary universe. Divine love evolves the universe as it leans into an unknown future.” Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, p. 202. 

God/Love: Known Mystery

God has always held as Mystery while Love’s masquerade as sure, known, embraced slips away. Yet change often trues and now the two more converge. Perhaps an evolving consciousness signals as the most reliable marker on the pathway. Reassurance to continue on comes with the edge of knowing and not through the devil-curse of dead-certainty. 

“Evolution is not only the universe coming to be but it is God who is coming to be insofar as God arises with the development of consciousness.” [fn p. 72, Delio, Unbearable Wholeness]

   My current support and guide for this trapeze-trail comes from Ilia Delio’s The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love. The text distills, interprets, and blends Teilhard de Chardin, Raimon Panikkar, Moltman along with Tillich and  others in exploring this inexplicable wonder. For example:

“God loves the world with the very same love which God is. God is not divine substance governing creation but the radical subject of everything that exists, the depth and wholeness of nature itself that reveals itself in its hiddenness. God’s love fills up each being as ‘this’ (and not ‘that’), but the limits of any being cannot contain God; thus, the excess of God’s love spills over as ‘transcendence,’ more than any being can grasp. Transcendence is the fecundity of love and the ‘yearning’ dimension of everything that exists.” [p. 71]

   While quantum physics quakes the foundations of space/time craved by fundamentalism, the shaky feeling found in venturing into sacred ground, like the sense of “participation mystique,” may be eased. The invitation is to know love that knows and loves beyond the hard boundaries of physical touch and sight.

“The divine mystery is the ultimate AM of everything. God is not the ontologically distinct Being who empowers created beings but the very dimension of created being by which being transcends itself toward greater relationality, wholeness, and depth… God is the unlimited depth of love of all that is, a love that overflows into new life.” (pp. 66-67)

 

Inarticulate Luminous

     Often, if not always, the Path to the Divine appears, at best, only as the body’s weight suspends over the abyss and then, when almost falling, the invisible manifests again, supporting the now-present. A luminous step glimmers, almost immediately disappearing, necessitating moving on. Ibn ‘Arabi, so confusing yet comforting: “Thus it is established that motion belongs to love, for there is no motion in being that is not that of love” (p. 262, Ibn Al-‘Arabi: The Ringstones of Wisdom, Trans. Caner K. Dagli). Courage to continue on, even faced with fear of falling, then may be summoned, founded in the promise of “following the footsteps” of the prophet or priest, Lord of both worlds, even when such tracks shimmer in wonder more than in familiar forms that are touchable with this world’s eyes or fingers.

     The person who moves this way, more likely than not, gets seen as “mad” (Majnun) or love-sick. Indeed, the best hint of being on-track frequently comes in the texture of longing and/or of bewilderment; for the Divine surpasses the human. Direction comes in the tones of love; the way includes going via the imaginal world and seems best expressed in the play of poetry. This almost maddening dynamic is wonderfully explored in Michael Sells’ The Translator of Desires, his translation and commentary on Ibn ‘Arabi’s poetry. The endless pursuit of the beloved offers expression for how

“… the divine persona manifests itself in the polished mirror of the heart. Because God or ‘the Real’ is infinite, beyond space and time, its manifestation in space and time lasts only for a moment. In every new moment the manifestation changes. Whoever attempts to hold onto the image locks himself into the dead husk of that manifestation and precludes himself from receiving new manifestations of the divine. The goal is to let go of the previous image in order to be receptive to the divine appearance the next moment within the polished mirror of the heart.” (p. xxvii)

5:11 AM

5:53 AM

  

     Like the traveller on the desert sands, endurance includes seeing the oasis dissolve as mirage; still trusting instead the camel’s scent of water. Body leads the mind. Knowing through the polished heart surpasses hard reason. So it is the beloved mediates the inarticulable between: on one side the experience of human love, on the other Divine. The known and the unknowable. 

(A screensaver appeared while drafting this material.)

     Ibn ‘Arabi elaborates on Moses as a guide finding the way. “The station of Moses… could only be possessed by one who had separated realized knowledge from imagination and illusion” (p. 271, Ringstones). In the Preface, Dagli comments on separation but not severance of knowledge from imagination: 

“Indeed, one of the themes of the Fusus is the limitation of the conceptual intelligence in imposing its vision upon the imagination. The former seeks out transcendence and aims to reduce multiplicity to a far-reaching conceptual oneness, whereas the latter perceives and understands the world as a concrete multiplicity of forms and images; it is a vehicle for perceiving the immanence and presence of God. To acknowledge one to the exclusion of the other is to sever man from part of himself.” (p. xi)

      Holding the tension of the unity alongside this multiplicity allows the “one way” to paradoxically coexist with the integrity of unique authentic pathways for each created being. Crucial to this mystery is the capacity to penetrate through to the essence which is the source and life of each moment of creation. 

     The Ringstone of Moses elaborates on this with discussion of Moses’ birth mother as providing the breast milk even after he had been placed in Pharaoh’s household. 

“Then God forbade him to be suckled by any wet nurse, so that he could receive the breast of his mother…It is the same for the Laws’ knowledge. Recall that God has said, For each of you we have appointed a law and a way (Q 5:48), that is, a path. As for ‘way,’ this means that it ‘came from’ that path. These words indicate the principle from whence it came. It is the source of nourishment… the affair is a new creation without repetition. (pp. 258-9, Ringstones).

     Engaging with Ibn ‘Arabi often makes my head swim, but reassurance also comes from his text: 

“Now, guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment, and know that the affair is bewilderment and that bewilderment is unrest and motion, and that motion is life, without stillness and so without death, and is existence without non-existence.”  In note 14 to this passage, Dagli adds 

“… There is no end to the self-disclosure of God, and no matter how far one journeys through the light the never-ending expressions of the Real will always have the power to maintain the sojourner in his state of lucid drunkenness.” (pp. 256-7, Ringstones)

The Long and the Short of It All: God Is—

Everywhere. 

Diffused in radiance from here to the far beyond. 

In the so-short-lived blooms and no less in the scattered petals.

In the middle of the night before last, calling off sleep, flooding with invisible light and in too many soundless songs playing.

And that's all right. 

     Some questions have been asked many times and prayers sent up. To the Almighty: why the suffering? the injustice? And how can the promised Beloved be known more intimately? 

     Might the answer come in dreams and then spinning free-association fragments of lines read, keeping me awake? It seems best to give gratitude, not grumpiness. Sleep can be deferred, somewhat like the way mystics sacrificed, a hint like ascetics went without. These visitations just might be what the searcher of spirit, of heart and soul longs for.

 

From my personal library of a few hundred books related to mysticism, I've been reading recently in a few: especially Rkia Cornell’s provocative Rabi’a: From Narrative to Myth, Coleman Barks’ Hummingbird Sleep, and Helminski/Blaylock’s Rumi and His Friends.

Looking back over a dozen or so previous blog entries: A mystic, simply put, is someone tenuously claiming personal experience of the Divine. 

 As noted in another previous blog, one of my favorite texts engaging the great mystery surrounding this is Michael Sells’ Mystical Languages of Unsaying. 

As Sells' title indicates, the numinous presence eludes definition yet gives off just enough scent and/or taste to guide the next half-step, the leaning into. 

     The most poignant touch of this right now, for me, rises from continued remembrance of my soul brother so recently passing over, now whispering from the other shore in secret code that he promised in our long night before his going. Just a few years ago, like yesterday, he was playing this song:

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_xDWaR407ytRkXdTr6Edu4hvTTvs2NYg/view?usp=sharing

Putting my photos with John Amin’s playing and reflecting in the midnight hours led to these reflections:

Around three a.m. semi-waking from a dream

about a subtle way of teaching, intent on

the other. Trust. All about the mystic.

Through Van Morrison’s hymn, my brother 

John Amin evokes the calling, like the foghorn warns

or summons to the shore. Both of them.

The mystical living/dying. Midnight hours

in meditations say "Stay in the fire. Don't run

from transformation. Trust the One. Burn

through fear, set free desire to know too much.

Find Coleman’s fireflies and under stones, the guard

rails to innocence, to God, inside and out.

Going home Mystic firefly highway love song

Because while trying to hold impossibles we're

slipping away too. After all detaching is

the gypsy soul, butterfly wings lift fireflies.

So don't hold too tight. Love and let go–

But trust the faint spirits flickering at midnight

Guardian angels if faith tells true Visitors

Cross and carry bridge Unite. Believe in

Midnight sight

The mystic highway…

The subtle teaching. It's Sufi walking. Gift

Of the inner Divine