Mind-Body-Spirit, Pendulum Swings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Although hormone therapy since 2011 (for my prostate cancer) has taken its toll in various ways, my spirit remains as feisty as ever;. Even so, mind and body have been feeling the strain  - rarely more so than now as COVID-19 continues to dictate how we manage our lives.  How I miss seeing my friends now, the same who have been so kind, helpful and supportive. Without them, living on my own would have been so much more of a daily struggle. As it is (yes, even now when social distancing means we cannot even share a hug) their familiar voices - on the phone or in my head - lend me the strength to carry on..

Now, as regular readers are well aware, I subscribe to no religion. Every now and someone gets in touch to ask how can I live without religion yet claim to have a strong sense of spirituality. Well, for a start, I don't see religion as having a monopoly on spirituality; the human spirit is independent of religion. Moreover, I see the world's religions as responsible for much if not most of its penchant for divisiveness, separatism and bigotry.

For me, ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ are but effective metaphors for the better and worse aspects of life we get to experience.  At best, this may well be joy verging on the sublime; at worst, misery enough to all but bury a person alive.  

Having suffered from depression for years, and felt buried alive more times than I care to recall, I am grateful to both nature and human nature for regularly invoking joys worthy of another metaphor, namely ‘resurrection’. (I speak here as a poet and wordsmith and intend no offence to any who may use the same terms in a religious context.) It is worth remembering, I think, that religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality; the human spirit has a mind of its own. Mind you, I suspect all of it (and us) are subject to the whims of Time ...

 ‘Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear’. - Byron  (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 109)

'The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.  - Carl Jung

M-I-N-D, PENDULUM SWINGS

Life is what we make it

(a heaven, too, and even hell)

by choice or circumstance

as we ride out its pendulum swings

for better, for worse

Heaven is letting a sense

of spirituality keep a tight hold

on the heart, independent

of socio-cultural-religious comment

to whatever effect

Hell is dreading the dawn,

putting a brave face on enemy lines

(distress or worse)

in suffering its brutality at first hand

or a close second

Heaven has its moments

in any lifetime, the more so if shared
by two hearts

than one if better that than its beauty

should pass us by

Hell, a door left wide open

or ajar, ready to receive rich and poor,

all as vulnerable

to excesses of nature or human nature

as any one of us

Swings of the pendulum

ever sounding us out for our findings
along such passages
of time and space as mind-body-spirit
cares to venture

Pendulum's swing ceases,
human clock stopping, its face giving
nothing away
for its having measured out our history
in thought and deed

Pendulum (and clock) dead
to the world, although all is not yet lost,
some clock maker
left to work on their findings, similarly
a labour of love

                                                                                       

Copyright R. N. Taber 2017, 2020

[Note: A reader asks why I don't use social media. Well, relatively few people are into poetry so I am all the more delighted that many find their own way to my blogs; whether or not they like what they find is another matter, of course.] <<wry bardic grin>>