Festival of Oil, Ashuru Shamni

A prayer for 'Ashuru Shamni

Excerpt:

May Ba'lu Haddu, Cloudrider, guide those who honor him. May the pukhru kina'ani be guided. May Motu know the limits, Yammu know the shores, and may Ba'lu Haddu know the boundaries. May the liminal spaces be blessed, may the thresholds be blessed. May the liminal spaces be guarded, may the thresholds be guarded. 

Winter Dawn's Praise

Sometimes the Dawn's light comes not in rose hues.

He works His way aloft at Night's shift's end

Or climbs the vaulted stairwell at Day's fresh bend

While clad in robes of chill and twilight blue.

He edges, imperceptibly, at first.

He doesn't crack, but grows and pushes forth:

Quiet crescendo slightly right of North.

In dark, His face spills, flowing light; breath's burst.

The winter's Dawn is insulated; snow

Accumulations azure, without sound.

I shared with morn my song; no finch I found.

A gift I sing to winter Dawn's ice flows.

The season's cold, still Dawn I shall revere;

With Dawn's goodwill I pass through storms severe.

Subsistence

I dare recall the days of dewy mist

When the expectant air parted, like lips

Through which the gloried names of Gods persist.

How dwindled now their offerings--but pips--

When first of harvest's fruits we once did give.

In ignorance our wants Their needs eclipsed. 

Primordial, the Deities still live.

With prayer and song we lift our hopes once more.

The thorny chaff of mishap They do sieve.

When we shall seek Their goodly grace, a door

Will part. When in good faith we make amends

We heal the broken bonds; the roots restore.

Entanglement of worries we resist

With strength. In good relations we subsist.

God of the Meridian

"God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To Thee my soul has flown,
And my body is earthward pressed.
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division,
And leaves a gulf austere
To be filled with worldly fear.
Ay, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted we do gaze
After its airy maze
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws--
And is this not the cause
Of madness? -- God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and Thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see Thy bowers
More unalarmed."

--John Keats

I'd been leafing through a beloved creased and flecked paperback volume of Keats when I rediscovered this poem. The words spoke deeply to me of divine trauma--something a few of us have experienced when working with and honoring our deities. I thought I would share these words here that it may lift the day of someone who has experienced similarly. 

"God of the Meridian" by John Keats. Written prior to 1821, Public Domain.