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    Entering the Stream: Poems about Union
    Entering the Stream: Poems about Union
    Entering the Stream: Poems about Union
    Ebook146 pages42 minutes

    Entering the Stream: Poems about Union

    By N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

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    About this ebook

    The notion and phrase of "entering the stream" has long been an image for merger and union. Most often it is meant to sum up the idea of union with the Divine Principle or God. Less often, yet still common, it is used to image the union of ideas, bodies, and movements.

    The sense that one thing folds into or flows into another and gets lost is still a major underpinning toward the belief that there is some "ah ha" moment in life where we are able to drift out of simple, commonplace existence and enter the field of ALL knowing. We believe that there can be and is a moment of merger (a born-again instant), an awakening to something outside of what it means to be singularly dual.

    It is not by chance that the two sacramental rites within Christianity that have the deepest roots in the gathered community over time--reaching down into the loam of our existence--are Baptism and Eucharist. The first--the initiation rite--is about dissolving into God and His mercy and forgiveness. We enter into Him and the fullness of His Kingdom. We are overwhelmed by the waters and emerge a new creature. The second--the continuation rite--is about God dissolving into us. He enters us bringing the fullness of His Kingdom. We ingest God (depending upon your theology) in either image or fact and we emerge a new creature.

    The poems that follow are about this "axis of consumption," this "axis of dissolving" in our lives. We are swallowed up by God. We swallow up God.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateFeb 7, 2011
    ISBN9781621893837
    Entering the Stream: Poems about Union
    Author

    N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

    N. Thomas Johnson-Medland is an end-of-life specialist and doula. He is the author of Wayfaring Stranger; River Bending; Coming Back Home; In the Same Place; Bathed in Abrasion; Bridges, Paths, and Waters: Dirt, Sky, and Mountains; Cairn-Space; Entering the Stream; Along the Road; From the Belly of the Whale; Danse Macabre; Feed My Sheep: Lead My Sheep; Windows and Doors; For the Beauty of the Earth; Duende; and Turning Within. He lives a stone's throw from the Susquehanna River in Columbia, Pennsylvania-just outside Lancaster-with his wife, Glinda. Tom and Glinda have two adult sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel. Reach him here

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      Book preview

      Entering the Stream - N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

      Introduction

      The notion and phrase of entering the stream has long been an image for merger and union. Most often it is meant to sum up the idea of union with the Divine Principle or God. Less often, yet still common, it is used to image the union of ideas, bodies, and movements.

      The sense that one thing folds into or flows into another and gets lost is still a major underpinning toward the belief that there is some ah ha moment in life where we are able to drift out of simple, commonplace existence and enter the field of ALL knowing. We believe that there can be and is a moment of merger (a born-again instant) an awakening to something outside of what it means to be singularly dual.

      It is not by chance that the two sacramental rites within Christianity that have the deepest roots in the gathered community over time—reaching down into the loam of our existence—are Baptism and Eucharist. The first—the initiation rite—is about dissolving into God and His mercy and forgiveness. We enter into Him and the fullness of His Kingdom. We are overwhelmed by the waters and emerge a new creature. The second—the continuation rite—is about God dissolving into us. He enters us bringing the fullness of His Kingdom. We ingest God (depending upon your theology) in either image or fact and we emerge a new creature.

      We are swallowed up by God. We swallow up God.

      Both of these rites of the Christian faith are from among the ken of mythological tales told over and over in time immemorial among all of man’s quests for meaning and placement in this universe. We somehow wrestle with being consumed by the ALL and we also wrestle with consuming the ALL.

      You do not have to look hard to find the stories of Chronos all over the landscape of human growth and development—either in story or psyche. Man gobbles up that which is around him—things that pose a threat and things that do not.

      + + +

      Poetry, like prayer, is a ladder in. It takes us into either the heart of the individual (the self) or into the heart of the Divine (the Self). And, although the in we refer to in entering into the Self is somewhat of an outward movement In—beyond ourselves into the ONE—it is nonetheless a move into the non-local identity we possess in God.

      The words of poetry and prayer are vehicles of experience. Poems take us to the experience of the Self/self. Theology, history, biology, cartography, geology and all the other ologies and ographies take us to the edge of experience, narrating and describing all that is about us—all that we see out there.

      Poetry can take us from the outer edges of simple description into the creative landscape of Presence, which is of course what distinguishes the boundary between knowledge about and knowledge of. Poetry and prayer are experiences of, not just experiences about. They are about the in here of the out there.

      Poetry is nothing less than hopping from rock to rock into the experience of what is itself. It tends to prepare the heart for exploding out and connecting with what is outside (and inside) in a visceral primal union. All at once.

      Rumi was a master of the in here and out there. His poems are able to weld us to the Creative Father—to force us open and into union. You can read his poems and get lost hopping across the

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