A Book is like a Sacred Isle
A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE
A Book about Books: A Rain of Booklight
Prose & Poetry & Art
A book is like a sacred isle
It briefly isolates my life
With a freeing inner peace
Unique to me
It keeps me in its keep
Well insulates my heart
With a moat around my joy
An invisible see
Its pages form a speaking rock
It impacts the mind it anchors
With a message from its plot
Its leaves unlock
Its words create a wealth of life
It weaves the hidden tale
With an inner sacred wisdom
Found between the lines
A book is like a charted isle
Interpreting my soul
With intercepting knowledge
Its enchanting lines decode
Introductory Note
I had in mind a sort of coffee table presentation for this book and that each of the Ragged Writings in the Poetry Section would have a drawing, or painting on the page opposite . . . which is why I have placed the titles of the poems near the left hand margin . . . that the Ragged Writings have a kind of lead in, or a follow on from the drawing on the left hand page.
In my mind’s eye, I see it is as a beautiful book to encourage and maintain the art and practice of reading . . . real books! . . . in an era of digital everything, an ephemeral virtual world of shrinking values . . . and most of all to be an inspiration towards increasing creativity and the life of the spirit through the surrender of the self.
The Quest Alight
What is a Book? ...Or, what is it like?
This sounds like a crazy question, doesn’t it? Of course we know what a book is! At least we believe we do. But I have come to see this as having many different answers; and perhaps not ones we would ever suspect. One day I found myself pondering this nonsensical question.
I happened to see an open book, lying upside down on the grass beneath a huge spreading tree. A forgotten book; accidentally left behind, I presumed. I looked about me but there was no one around; there were no people to be seen anywhere. It had been a sunny day; but now it was grey, and cold, and lightly raining.
As I stood there time seemed to cease. I remember this strange sensation; it had happened to me before. It was as though I was there for hours, and yet I am sure it was only for a moment or two. I was standing there under this tree just staring at the upturned book. It was laying on the outer edge of a little protective ‘harbour’ in between two great buttress roots coming out from the base of the trunk. There was still no one around, but I felt shy at the thought of picking it up. I walked on. I tried to forget about it.
But later that evening I couldn’t get the thought of the open book out of my mind. For awhile I kept chiding myself for not picking it up and taking it. I could see the book so clearly in my mind; the attractive colours of its cover picture – yellow, gold and white, and purple. I was reaching out to it. All at once it was like I was seeing a translucent mist rising up from it. I saw this mist was its energy. Light was shining within it, sparkling, speckled with gold and silver and many soft colours; it was beautiful! Suddenly I knew, with a flash of insight, that this was its ‘spirit;’ and that all books had ‘a spirit.’ Immediately this thought came into my mind: ‘What is a book?’ Strangely, not for one moment did I think it a foolish thought. On the contrary, it seemed to me to be infused with wonder! It filled me with excitement!
How astonishing the potency of one tiny instantaneous thought; a question coming to one, from out of nowhere; from ‘out of the blue:’ it set me upon a path of introspective questioning, leading to the writing of a sequence of poems, and a piecemeal series of articles and stories; which fully occupied me for a few months! This book you now have in your possession came directly from just that one tiny spark of light and life!
So . . . a Book: What is it?
With the digital age consuming the world the definition of a book is changing: it can no longer be wholly described by its physical nature: as a lot of pieces of paper, in a tidy block, held together with glue or twine between two cardboard covers. Out of necessity our definition of a ‘book’ would needs go deeper, and deal with its more intimate nature on a more nebulous, or spiritual level – just as everything in the world is steadily moving or evolving toward its essential inner quality; for we are becoming increasingly more aware of our being spiritual beings integrally involved in a spiritual universe.
We are finding that our answers to anything are significantly expanding and in direct proportion to the depths we are prepared to go to in opening up, personally. It is the same with anything dealt with in a personal way, in any and every field of life, there is always more and more, that way! Personal is Spiritual. And vise versa. They are inseparably connected: we cannot, truly, have one without the other.
It seems we are becoming aware of a law every bit as dynamic as the law of gravity: that spiritual knowledge increases in proportion to our self-knowledge: ‘Then shall I know even as also I am known.’
This is a basic principle of life; and one which has been very slow in coming to the fore. It has taken millennia for its wide and fuller interpretation to filter through and to be understood; because it is ‘against us;’ and not what we think we want! For it always entails a certain ‘pulling back;’ as in the arrow upon the string of a bow; one’s eye to the desired target, but then the pulling back of the arrow; for the greater the pull against what it wants, the greater the power of the arrow to reach what it wants. The gaining of any true spiritual knowledge is the same. It always entails a certain un-doing in order to achieve it; a descent to ascend: a decrease to increase. But for untold generations we haven’t been prepared, on the whole, to pay the price: there is a cost to anything worth having.
I looked at my target subject: books; a subject which seemed to have been chosen for me to explore. I stepped back from it. I walked ‘backwards’ for awhile, further and further: losing more and more of what I knew, for what I didn’t know, and finding things to say, I didn’t know I knew.
So . . . what is a ‘book?’ If you were searching for a beginning, then perhaps you could say that a book is
Continued….
To read the full manuscript please contact felicity on info@judithdeverell.com