Holy cities

I sought you, oh I sought you
Only to find
There is no mecca that can hold you
Nor any place that could confine

I have seen no holy city
for they are the works of man
Oh but there is a holy spirit
I met him in my mother’s garden

The sky cried out like a lamb
as the veil was torn apart
and the black that covered everything
could not penetrate my heart

Oh there is no golden temple
and I have never heard you shout
but when I break the cinders open
the flames come pouring out.

chorus:
O! Gold and Red,
lit the sky above my head
I was tangled up in vines
Sure that I would end up dead

But you found me just the same,
and you called me by name
and the furrow on your brow
speaks of love I can’t explain

Fact

If you think no one can understand you, it’s probably because you wont let them.

Mecca

How great are the gifts of God

I sought you, oh, I sought you
only to discover that
there is no Mecca that can contain you
No holy city, but a holy spirit
No great temple but the heart
No stony silence but a sea of whispers

Wendell Berry sabbath poem

X

Tanya. Now that I am getting old,
I feel I must hurry against time to tell you
(as long ago I started out to do) everything,

though I know that really there can be no end
to all there is for me to say to you even of this,
our temporary life. Sometimes it seems to me

that I am divided from you by a shadow
of incomprehension, mine or yours, or mind and yours;
or that I am caught in the misery of selfhood

forever. And I think that this must be
the lot (may God help us) of all mortals who love
each other: to know by truth that they do so,

but also by error. Often now I am reminded
that the time may come (for this is our pledge)
when you will stand by me and know

that I, though “living” still, have gone beyond
all remembering, as my father went in time
before me; or that I have gone, like my mother,

into a time of pain, drugs, and still sleep.
But I know now that in that great distance
on the edge or beyond the edge of this world

I will be growing alight with being. And (listen!)
I will be longing to come back. This
came to me in a dream, near morning,

after I had labored through the night under
this weight of earthly love. On time’s edge, wakened,
shaken, light and free, I will be longing

to return, to seek you through the world,
to find you (recognizing you by you beauty),
to marry you, to make a place to live,

to have children and grandchildren. The light
of that place beyond time will show me the world
as perhaps Christ saw it before His birth

in the stable at Bethlehem. I will see that it is
imperfect. It will be imperfect. (To whom would love
appear but to those in most desperate need?) Yes,

we would err again. Yes, we would suffer
again. Yes, provided you would have it
so, I would do it all again.