Listen to the Birds

A song composed by Bethany Petersen for the 2023 Assisi Conference.

Hieroglyphic Stairway

by Drew Dellinger

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I'm riding home on the Colma train
I've got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars
I am everything already lost
the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I'm a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I'm riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I'm the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I can't sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

Drew is a speaker, poet, writer, and teacher who has inspired minds and hearts around the world, performing poetry and keynoting on justice, ecology, cosmology, and compassion. He is also a consultant, publisher, and founder of Planetize the Movement.

Kuan Yin

By Susan Rodgers                                  

You sit upon a pedestal of jade

milk green, your light flows liquid from within

pulsing prayer through rivulets of stone.

And so, you are a contradiction, made

hard jade, yet soft like sacred love, Kuan Yin.

You guide me even now. Through you I own

my stiff resistance to God’s grace. Afraid

to melt, I keep my edges hard and in

my heart I keep your love, for me alone.

Your right eye holds a tear forever laid

in stone; it holds me too. I drink you in,

search for your source of peace, the deep calm known

and shared by you. Within the jade, Kuan Yin

it’s here. I remember now— compassion 

“The poem Kuan Yin is dedicated to Keishu Okada, the daughter of Kotama Okada. It is also dedicated to Amrtianandamayi. It was inspired by a jade figurine of Kuan Yin at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California.”

THE ORIGIN IS ONE

for Kotama Okada, by Susan Rogers

The dove knows the way

follow her.

Your heart knows the way

listen well.

Within your deepest self

are wings of light.

They cover the earth 

with waves of love.

Do you remember?

You once knew.

Stand in the warmth

of sunlight and recall.

The origin of the world

is one. 

The origin of religions

is one.

The origin of all

humankind is one.

The origin of the universe 

is one.

Circle back.

Imagine the great will

of all things

stirring in your fingers.

Reach out your arms

and open your palms

to the sky.

It is time.

“This poem begins almost every one of my poetry readings. It carries a core of spiritual truth …  in its reference to a fundamental tenet of Sukyo Mahikari taught by its founder Kotama Okada: ‘The origin of the world is one, the origin of religions is one, the origin of all humankind is one, the origin of the universe is one.’ The poem is dedicated to Okada who not only brought this teaching to the world, but dedicated his life to sharing it with others and to being an example of its truth.

As the source of everything is the one Creator who is responsible for the natural world, all human beings and all faiths, we are all inextricably connected not only to each other but to the one world we all share. This sense of oneness and connection is one of my core values. It is deeply seeded in my soul and serves as a guiding principle; it infuses both my life and my art.”

Susan Rogers, Assisi 2023

The Kingdom of God

by Francis Thompson (1859 – 1907)

'In no Strange Land'

 O world invisible, we view thee,
 O world intangible, we touch thee,
 O world unknowable, we know thee,
 Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

 Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
 The eagle plunge to find the air--
 That we ask of the stars in motion
 If they have rumour of thee there?

 Not where the wheeling systems darken,
 And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

 The angels keep their ancient places;--
 Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
 That miss the many-splendoured thing.

 But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
 Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss
 Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
 Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

 Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
 Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems;
 And lo, Christ walking on the water
 Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

In 2002, Katherine A. Powers, literary columnist for the Boston Globe wrote of Thompson:

"His medical training and life on the streets gave him a gritty view of reality and a social conscience, and his governing idea that God is immanent in all things and in all experience, so vexatious to both Victorians and the Vatican alike, no longer strikes an alien or heretical note."

The Peaceable Kingdom

by Edward Hicks (1780 – 1849)

The vision of an American “peaceable kingdom” envisioned by William Penn was expressed by Edward Hicks (1780 – 1849), the Quaker folk painter and minister. Hicks depicted humans and animals living together in peace. This was also meant to represent the idea of breaking down barriers between individuals. This concept is also exemplified by showing Native Americans meeting to sign a peace treaty with William Penn and the Quaker community. This was one of the very few peace treaties in American history which were honored, at least as long as William Penn remained Governor.

Spring in Kulu & Mount of Five Treasures (Two Worlds)

“Mount of Five Treasures (Two Worlds)” (1933)

A Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure, who influenced a movement in Russian society around the spiritual. He was interested in spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he lived around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He earned several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Roerich Pact was signed into law by the United States and most nations of the Pan-American Union in April 1935.

Roerich matriculated simultaneously at St. Petersburg University and the Imperial Academy of Arts during 1893. He received the title of "artist" in 1897 and a degree in law. He directed the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts from 1906 to 1917. He was President of Sergei Diaghilev's "World of Art" society from 1910 to 1916.

Artistically, he became known as his generation's most talented painter of Russia's ancient past, compatible with his lifelong interest in archaeology. He also succeeded as a stage designer, achieving his greatest fame as one of the designers for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. His best-known designs were for Borodin's Prince Igor (1909) and costumes and set for The Rite of Spring (1913), composed by Igor Stravinsky.

Another of Roerich's passions was architecture. His acclaimed publication "Architectural Studies" (1904–1905) – the dozens of paintings he completed of fortresses, monasteries, churches, and other monuments during two long trips through Russia – inspired his decades-long career as an activist on behalf of artistic and architectural preservation. He also designed religious art for places of worship throughout Russia and Ukraine: most notably the Queen of Heaven fresco for the Church of the Holy Spirit; and the stained glass windows for the Datsan Gunzechoinei Buddhist Temple in St. Petersburg (1913–1915).

During the 1900s and in the early 1910s, Roerich, along with his wife Helena, developed an interest in eastern religions, as well as Theosophy. Both Roerichs became avid readers of the Vedantist essays of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, and the Bhagavad Gita. The Roerichs' commitment to occult mysticism increased steadily. It was especially intense during World War I and the Russian revolution of 1917, to which the couple, like many Russian intellectuals, accorded apocalyptic significance. The influence of Theosophy, Vedanta, Buddhism, and other mystical topics can be see in many of his paintings and in the many short stories and poems Roerich wrote before and after the 1917 revolutions, including the Flowers of Morya cycle, begun in 1907 and completed in 1921.

“Spring in Kulu” (1930)