The Shadow of Light

I came to Ireland to be alone again in some very powerful places... to realize again the deep Celtic heart of this land... of my heart and the heart of my father(s). I came to Ireland to heal a broken heart and face down the "beasts" of my own shadow and the shadow of my father(s). It was a powerful experience facing them both at the same time alone in the land of their origin... in the dark, heavy, melancholy and unremitting rain and dampness of this proud yet so deeply wounded place. Driven by my personal inquisition and the genetic beasts of my inner narrative, I found myself at the rectory door of a Glendalough priest and the conversation of a lifetime. I then began to understand the darkness... its power to transform things and invite the light... no, its power to demand of the light its presence... demand the light TO BE. Light emerges from the darkness... always overcomes yet contains the darkness within itself. This is the blood-truth of the Celtic soul. This is the blood-truth of life.

P. Donovan

Dublin, 2007

And now I watch my father die a slow death. This proud, loving man

who once held me so gently in his arms and in his memory, is now

locked away in some inaccessible corner of a deteriorating brain

tormented by his own beasts and the shadow of his fathers. He no

longer sees me, knows me, and I can't reach him, touch him, save

him any longer. I can't help the one man who so loved me he would

give his life for me. I can only watch helplessly as that meaningful

life and all it contained, my father, disintegrates away in front of me.

Sacred Sword

Sacred sword against my chest,
tongue of steel,
sharp and cutting,
speak to me tonight of wounded hearts
in the struggle for love’s favor.

Who wins?
Who loses?
Who leaves?
Who stays?

And who dies alone
forsaken on this holy ground of broken promises?

Tell me now
so I can sleep just this night
or sleep this night
forever.

© p. donovan

On Trial for Your Love

Tonight I am on trial

for the beauty of your love.

They claim I felt you naked.

But I swear I wore a glove.

And so I’ve pleaded guilty

in this holy court of laws.

judged by introspections

and convicted by my flaws.

They say you were imprisoned

by this lustful cruel desire,

to see your body naked

in all its flesh and all its fire.

But I beg for your forgiveness.

I beg for your embrace.

I beg to be released and freed

from the torment of this place.

Now I stand upon this gallows.

With no guilt and with no shame

for loving you without malice

for loving you without blame.

This hangman’s noose is welcomed

As it caudles my last breath

And I pass this night forever,

this night of welcomed death.

Please morn me in my passing.

Remember me to your kin;

this man who so once loved you

in your beauty and your sin;

this man who so once loved you

when you would not let him in.

© p. donovan

A 14th century introduction to the world as it may be seen from one man's long perspective; this brief note is from Petrarch:

You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,

of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,

I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its trials.

Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;

and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world's delight is a brief dream.

Why is struggle so integral to life and the evolution of consciousness?

This was a question one of our good friends Steve, a brilliant medical astrologer and mystic in his own right asked a few years ago. He inquired with an already deep understanding of the nature of life's unfoldment. His question opened up an ongoing dialogue about the nature of life... The Source of life and consciousness and its nature; the paradox of light and dark, "good" and "evil" as our egoic minds define and experience such dichotomies; the apparent violence from which new worlds/suns/planets/universes and life is born and destroyed, the paradoxical "predestined-randomness" of life, and so much more.

Let's discuss!