These writings do not express my path as much as what came from deeply reflecting what has come to me during my Journey. There is a progression to these writings. Most often, crises, tragedy, or emptiness within are the catalyst to the most meaningful journey in life. So, please remember that the first poetic writings express many of those feelings.
The dates are not chronological, as our journeys are circuitous. Insights come when they come. This section is simply to share what the journey to self integration can include.
LOCKED ACHE
(These are also lyrics to the musical piece “Locked Ache” found on the Compassion’s Caress Album)
I have so much ache locked inside
No tears fall from hollow eyes.
Try as I might to live within this pain,
wave After wave compounds the AGONY.
I walk the dark streets of my mind.
No scream, no moan, comes from me.
Do they see the HOLE in me?
Yearning clashes with “what’s wrong with me.”
Does anyone know as they talk to me?
I die again, and again.
Same pattern just different cast.
Time is breaking this hourglass.
Sunlit star shining down on me:
“Now, will you hear Me” Love says to me,
“Are you real?” I hear my self say.
Oh streams of hope, shimmering,
Soul crying, for its home.
Lost, abandoned, by my own neglect.
Fragile core, its needs unmet.
I cry, as I find you now.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1976, Contemplative Life Foundation
AWAKE BUT NOT ALIVE
Have you ever sat and wondered where the day is filled with aliveness?
Am I left behind because I am not trying?
Is it off somewhere laughing at me, partying?
Have you ever sat and wondered If you would find that aliveness during the night?
I dressed up, went out, but in the end was left with an empty class of hours, waiting.
Have you ever felt that aliveness has left you behind?
Am I stranded, am I a waste?
I might as well get up, I am being robbed, blind.
Pheo Rose
Copyright 1977, Contemplative Life Foundation
LOST IN THE KNOWN
From here, I know not where I will go …
my direction is uncertain, my company unknown.
I am lost in the place I know …
will I be found in the unknown?
Courage to stay, courage to go …
Which is required of me?
You, O Oneness of Love, are a sure Light,
I have wandered such a long time
following my will’s dim light.
It is time to listen in solitude, which is where I find You.
Directing my faith and strength
In/To You. And into Aliveness.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1973, Contemplative Life Foundation
WILL I CHOOSE TO BE ALIVE, OR JUST LIVING?
Will I die to myself,
So that a new life may be born in me?
Will I have the faith to dare
To follow the wisdom of the ages and not the crowd I see?
Will I seize the Inner Journey,
To rid myself of my shadows,
so my Light of Love may shine?
Will I reject hatred by refusing to hate
And defeat hatred with Love?
I have seen the evidence
of those who traveled this trail,
I have their words and actions,
And know how they cared.
Now I must choose,
for my life is only so long.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1982, Contemplative Life Foundation
THE LIVING WATER OF FAITH
Barrenness about the dust of my feet,
Aloneness hangs like scorching rags.
A thirst, worse than this desert, haunts me.
Glare hits my eyes, I can no longer see.
Need unmet immobilizes.
I no longer follow the commonly trod trail.
In the stillness of being broken,
I hear knowledge that I know, but have never heard.
“Come, I will give you living water,
Never will you thirst this deeper thirst.”
I reach for this in the nothingness, almost blind.
Barrenness still has its way with me,
The dust too swirls to parch my mouth.
Aloneness seems to have no other call.
But thirst haunts me not,
And for this I give praise and thanks.
Those trying to drink a reflection will ever thirst.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1981, Contemplative Life Foundation
INTO THE STILLNESS MY MIND/BODY MUST GO
Into the stillness my mind/body must go.
To walk alone with my soul.
I must travel in solitude’s direction,
a motionless pool, reflecting the light of inner knowledge.
Presence of compassion as real as from a person,
as a moment is a place in my being.
True Life flows,
but, unlike time, does not pass.
Pheo Rose summer of 1977
copyright 1977, Contemplative Life Foundation
Birth Of Day, Light
As an expectant mother, one waits for the birth,
anxious and hopeful for the freshness possible in new life.
As birth comes, one feels a part of the natural phenomenon.
But, all the while, with the realization of not being its cause.
Imperceptibly, magically, nature pulls off its gigantic trick,
From darkness to lightness without seeming change.
Yet, within that short period all living has changed.
With birth, colors and spectacular sights are unveiled.
It shall be so named Day, Light.
And having been part of the birth,
One feels closer to Day’s existence.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1972, Contemplative Life Foundation
Of Footprints.
Footprints along the waters edge
Are washed away in time.
Foolish are those disheartened by looking back.
At their impermanent steps.
Failing to see where the steps lead.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1981, Contemplative Life Foundation
The Prison of Self-Absorption Loneliness
My life had become like one imprisoned in a dark damp prison cell.
Cold water dripped from its dank walls like tears for my suffering.
What windows there had been, were now encased,
with only a dim outlined remembrance of light.
And the door through which I was so cruelly thrown,
mocked me with its immovable hinges.
No one came, bringing warmth of intimate conversation.
What happened to easy companionship?
Where were friends who would care enough
to release me from the loneliness racking my bones?
The one companion I had was an inner voice
that only hammered me with accusation:
“What did you do that condemned you to this?”
“You most wretched being, your selfishness has condemned you.”
Then one day, crossing the one stream of light under the door,
I saw a tiny bug busily making its way.
In a voice that had been so silenced, I found myself croaking:
‘I hope all you do is successful.’
My inner voice of condemnation chided me:
‘Look what you are reduced to, which is more pitiful you or that bug?’
But I refused to listen, and instead thanked You, O Oneness of Love
for this tiny life that was freer than I.
And, as that little bug regularly crossed back and forth,
I continued to bless it in You.
Then one day the light under the door dimmed,
but a creaking spoke of its being opened.
Carefully checking the threshold for my busy friend,
I stepped out into the softly lit hallway.
I greeted the fly that softly buzzed by;
And stopped to compliment the spider’s web.
To the moths circling the candle’s flame I found myself easily saying:
‘Be of care, for that light you seek can bring more than you want.’
Finding my way out, I was greeted by the dusk sky.
I was overwhelmed by the life I could now take in, greet, and give to.
The sounds of the night creatures, the smell of day’s end;
and I cherished all the soil’s flourishing life swaying before me —
life that I had once thought beneath me to cultivate.
I laughed with joy and cried with realization.
O Oneness of Love,
I, who had thought only that only my own successfulness could sustain me,
was imprisoned in this until I became so bereft
that I sought the companionship of the tiny life of a bug.
I was not pitiful to have croaked my first sentence of blessing,
but Blessed with enormous Grace to recognize and serve such companions.
Now, here are all these lives for me to enjoy, care for, and Bless in You.
O Oneness of Love, what companions these innocent lives.
What Warping by Darkness that we so easily dismiss them.
What a cold deadened species we have become.
We are imprisoning ourselves as we destroy the life around us.
Such Loneliness drives us on recklessly.
May the Vision of the World so beautifully created, Break through our Prison
and May We Free Ourselves by Serving all Creation.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1989, Contemplative Life Foundation
Nascent* Faith
Touching unending expansiveness – even just for a second.
Accepting for a moment – the inconceivable is.
Shedding despair’s torment “Is this all there really is?”
Our Vision of Existence, after all, only an illusion.
“I believe” utters the astounded voice.
Presence enveloping all loneliness,
Catching the heart’s beat.
Our Vision of love, after all, but a dim reflection.
“You do Exist” utters the astounded voice.
Do not extinguish the flash of hope,
Hold this glimpse of clarity rare,
Buffer taunts of inward doubt.
Fleeting the destiny in that breath,
Of one who lets go.
Eternal the destiny in that breath,
Of one who tenaciously perseveres.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1992 Contemplative Life Foundation
*Nascent – the state from which development can occur
AMERAU*
In the womb, mother carried and mother nurtured,
in the protection is a oneness.
Birth, bringing out aloneness,
casts from the garden.
Separate, individual, i.
Lost, longing in a world of otherness:
it, thou, them, theirs, ours, are but barbs
even God is above, father, almighty.
Damned to out sidedness.
Rebirth, into, inside, innerness.
Joy.
One, in the same.
I am,
in the womb,
answering the wail of a i.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1980 Contemplative Life Foundation
*Japanese connoting mother-child relationship
In the Midst Of Existence
Life, death, growth, and decay
compose the balance, rhythm and harmony of existence.
Only humans create separating components of these.
Time is such an extraneous concept
when in the midst of existence.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1973 Contemplative Life Foundation
Life’s Energy and the Emerging Person
A void to fill with imagery and organization,
Chaotic energy to channel and control.
Rhythm, design, image, and Word are all tools.
Process, with or without self direction?
A void to fill with love and understanding,
security and realization in sharing with one another,
color, highlights, and accents in pleasure and pain.
Need, with or without purpose?
Humans — energy expended with or without self-directed attainment.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1972 Contemplative Life Foundation
Longing
Longing links,
like a force with no innate power.
The human heart aches, for another.
There is One, Eternal and Ever Present
who always responds to the longing.
Fear not longing, only it’s misdirection.
For infinite and eternal is the pull of the call.
Pheo Rose
copyright 1981 Contemplative Life Foundation