Luminous

cross lights
water
sanctuary lights



A handwritten note in desk bought from a church in 2015. Submitted by Travis Poling.

Step two

although the thought that we wasted
money, misplaced our trust and threw away
our time sickens us to no end, we must

accept these logic-defying feats of idiocy
as learning experiences; otherwise, we will walk
no further on the NAA no-path. We must

say it again and again,
we�ve been toe fooled, we�ve been toe fooled, we�ve been
toe fooled.

are we home yet, Shanti? This must become our
anti-mantra, a non-affirmation
affirmation capable of penetrating our ether-filled minds,

helping us to admit that Jesus.com has nothing to
do with Nostradamus. Now is the time when we must
learn to question every Tom, Dick and Guru who shops

in a health food store, see that the only implants in
need of removal were inserted by the most dangerous E.T.
of all: Earth�s very own Extortion Terrestrials.

this is a difficult task indeed, for only those who�ve put their
inner children to bed know the difference between retail
spirituality and spiritual retaliation.



Excerpt from 12 Steps For The Recovering New Ager, New Age Anonymous. Submitted by Ana Prundaru.

Mosaic Mosaic

Don�t kill people.
Don�t marry two people.
Don�t act like a snake.
(Don�t be sneaky).



A child's list of how to do the right thing from The Most Hated Family in America, a Louis Theroux documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church, BBC 2007. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

Which Of These Fires From The Fire Catalogue Would You Like For Your Birthday?

(#3) the perpetual house-hold fire?
(#4) consecrated fire taken from the house-hold fire and placed in the east side?
(#7) powerful, mighty fire?
(#8) the fire that destroys?
(#9) the classical fire, belonging to the world of men?
(#10) the old or ancient fire, the fire pertaining to the stomach?
(#11) the entwining fire?
(#17) the calm, peaceful, serene fire?
(#20) the luminous, pure, brilliant fire?
(#21) the fire who is the priest?
(#22) the great, auspicious fire?
(#24) the fire consisting of wealth, or of good things?
(#26) the fire which is ethereal?
(#27) the conveyor of virtuous persons to heaven?

. . .the fire of time?
the fire of hunger?
the cold fire?

the fire of anger?


the fire of knowledge?



Fires conveying the sacrificial butter in Section VII of the Sabha Parva of Mahabharata, selected from Variants of Agni, Wikipedia, extracted 3 April 2015. Submitted by Maya Surya Pillay.

No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Bront�

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life - that in me hast rest,
As I - Undying Life - have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid

Cocoons: A Fibonacci Poem

We
are
becoming more
and more relaxed
with uncertainty, more and more
relaxed with groundlessness, more and more relaxed with

not having walls around us to keep us
protected in a little box
or cocoon.�Enlightenment
we do
not
have.



From The Bearable Lightness of Being by Pema Ch�dr�n, March 2014, Shambhala Sun. Submitted by Ali Znaidi.

Prompt: Robert Sward and "God is in the Cracks"

The Helix Nebula - also known as The Eye of God

In his poem, "God is in the Cracks," we have a dialog between poet Robert Sward and his father.

If you read that poem for this month's prompt, a number of paths might come to mind for your own writing:  1) a poem about fathers and sons  2) the acceptance (or lack of) what we have chosen to do with our lives by our family  3) the life of the mind versus a life more firmly grounded in "work."  The elder Mr. Sward even suggests, correctly, a poem about arch supports.

I would be okay with those three being the prompt for your November submission, but, for me, the heart of the poem is in the harder-to-explain idea of the title.

"Just a tiny crack separates this world
from the next, and you step over it
      every day,
God is in the cracks."

Robert Sward

Robert Sward's father, a podiatrist, came to the United States from Russia. Life experiences made him convert from Judaism to Rosicrucianism, a philosophical secret society. Living in the Jewish North Side of Chicago, his father practiced his religion in their basement, which figures in his collection, Rosicrucian in the Basement , where this poem originally appeared.

The religious or spiritual or philosophical theme is hard to avoid. Being raised Catholic, I had trouble as a child grasping this idea that I had two fathers - the one making eggs in the kitchen and another God the father who always appeared in illustrations as more grandfatherly than my own grandfather.

Avoiding those cracks so that you don't cross over to that other world every day reminded me of the recurring line in John Irving's novel, The Hotel New Hampshire: "Keep passing the open windows." Don't jump out and end it all, no matter how hard the day and life appear to be right now.

The title also made me think of the idea of God being "in the gaps." In the always argumentative meeting of science and religion, the religious side often inserts God into the "gaps" that appear in scientific explanations of the universe. Scientists trace back to a big bang where everything including time begins. But what triggered that big bang and what came before it? No answer. So, God fills that gap. It's an argument that angers scientists (Where's the evidence for God?) and pleases the believers because it has to be taken on faith, which stops all reasonable debating.

So, prompt #4 is my favorite and clearly the most difficult. It is to write about this crack or gap and God and how we step over it every day.  Maybe it also involves fathers and mothers, careers and family, the life of the mind and the everyday life. Maybe it's the support we want from our family that doesn't appear quite so literally as those in our shoes.

This work of being a poet is not as easy as it looks.

Submission deadline: Saturday, November 30, 2013