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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana

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Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley (2004) is an hour-long documentary that investigates why Jeff Buckley and his legendary album, Grace, became a cult music phenomenon

 

Listen on YouTube

Click on graphic

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Amazing Grace

The Movie

 

 

This is one of this writers all time favorite movies.  When you think that you are only very small and that you as an individual cannot do anything of import to change the world then play this movie.  

This is the story of a politician (William Wiberforce) who was inspired by the Divine and supported by a Prime Minister to change the world in service to Love.

I always cry at the end because I feel this is the only response that such an amazing grace movie can evoke.

Here is a part of this amazing movie.  Click on the graphic below.

As a storyteller I sing, listen too and contemplate songs for the mystical heart. This often makes me dance with joy and weep for the sorrow of the world and this experience of separateness from Love called Tony Cuckson tramping the world of Boogie Street.

I am so enjoying your beautiful writing and presence on the web. You offer us such a glorious invitation each time you write. You have a true gift...

Blessings all around

Jan Lundy - Retreat Leader, Public Speaker and Author -Your Truest Self: Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be."

A Story - The Bog of Allen 

for John and Claire

Jan Toorop

Desire and Fulfillment

I love to write stories for people or for different occasions.  When I am invited to do a festival I try write and perform new material rather than old.  This story is for a friend I have been blessed to meet with on the social networking site called Facebook.  When I write stories I try to include elements of poetry and mythology.  Often this mythology is Irish and the stories include reference to places in Ireland of mythological significance.

To help you relate to this story I need to tell you some things about it. In this story there are the people called the Tuatha de Danaan (pronounced Toooa de Dan an).  These people are one of the people to come to Ireland as told in and ancient Irish text called The Book of Invasions.  

Imagine if you will an Irish Star Wars.  The goodies are the people called the Tuatha de Danaan - the beautiful people - the Shining Ones.  On the other side representing the forces of darkness are the Fomorians.  At the second battle of Moytura (fought in Co. Sligo) the Tuatha de Danaan lost the battle and were driven underground.  Thus you can say that beauty is driven underground.

At the festival of Halloween each year the Tuatha de Danaan ride out of their underground world called the Sidhe and we wear masks because we are afraid of the beauty that lives underground in what we think is the darkness of the unconscious.  This gives you some brief outline of who the Tuatha de Danaan are and the forces they represent and always represent in our personal lives.

This is the first draft of this story. Stories are like good wine.  They need time to breathe.  The more I tell them the more full bodied they become.  One way of developing the communion held within the story is to share your experience of what it says to you.  

The story then becomes a co-creation.  This is the intention of telling stories in order to help us remember the beauty of who we are a co-creators with the universal intelligence that has many faces and many names.  One such name and such face is the unique expression that you are. So please feel free to share your experience of this story with me the writer or anyone else you care to invite into a walk between the worlds.

I won't tell you what the story means.  I will tell you that the field that the main character occupies is the field that Rumi invites us to come to in the Radiant Poem that is to the right of this page.  Having said that let us begin to settle down to hear this story.

The Bog of Allen

You have come to an old Irish cottage.  You are a bit lost for time and in this land of Ireland time is beginning to feel like it can go backwards as well as forwards.  You arrive at the place called The Thatch after you have followed signs that go left and right and twixt and in between.  In this land you are beginning to learn that things are not always as they might appear.

It is twilight time.  A time when you can fall across thin places  and meet with those known as the Walkers Between the Worlds.  You hear a voice singing the lilting sound of a fairy tune played on an ancient Irish harp.  It is as if this voice recognizes something in you long forgotten.  It is calling you by your name - the name you were given before time ever was.  

You meet with others at this old Irish cottage as they settle in a room of pale golden light to listen to an old Irish sanachie (storyteller). He settles himself by the fireside.  There is the crackle of firewood and the smell of burning peat.  When everyone has settled the storyteller begins to tell a story in the olden way.  It is a timeless way when people where not so afraid of the beauty of silence or the dark night of soul.  He begins.

Marcus Desiderata lives in a field.  He lives alone and has very simple needs.  People say of Marcus that he lives a life of poverty but Marcus is a rich man.  Marcus banks with a bank that gives him unlimited credit.  At this bank there were no tellers, no cash points and no forms to fill although you do need your personal identification number - your PIN.

Marcus had been given his PIN number with this bank long before the time that he was born.  Except that for a long long time Marcus Desiderata had forgotten it.  So he changed banks without even knowing that this had taken place.  The change happened slowly at first and then gathered pace until his credit rating changed.

Marcus then put all his time and money with that other Bank. This Bank was called The Bank of Time.  It gave him a credit rating that was dependant on how much he struggled to make a living. The more time Marcus gave to attaining credibility the more that he experienced a new kind of poverty - it was called time poverty. 

After changing Banks Marcus struggled to be of credit to himself, his family, his colleagues, his community.  In this struggle he sometimes faltered and wondered where the wonder he once knew had gone. In his struggle he found a friend who helped.  She was the one who allowed Marcus to feel relaxed and to feel more like his old unlimited self.  He began to feel a credit to himself and others.  

This friend was a woman.  She had a temperament that was as fiery as her red Irish hair.  She was called the Red Haired Girl from Bog.  She was full bodied and those who knew her well said she had a dimple in her bottom.  She invited Marcus to cross thin places and come to the field beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing when the soul lies down in that grass and the world is too full to talk about. 

Time came when Marcus Desiderata couldn't stop thinking about the red haired girl from the Bog.  He wanted to see her more and more and time came when he wanted only to see her in secret. She had become the only one who could see into him or into him see. She was the one who could see who he really was beyond all the struggle that he made to gain credit within the Bank of Time.

But the seeing he longed for made him blind.  He became blind to the fact that the red headed woman from the Bog did not love him but loathed him. One night he followed her out into the Bog of Allen where there are places that one can fall into and sink never to be seen again.  The forces of the Bog pull you down and down until down is the way that you are.

Marcus Desiderata still bears the wound of that time when he fought with the forces of the Bog of Allen on that dark night when he was far from the field beyond wrong doing and right doing.  

The battle with the forces of the Bog of Allen came to a head when Marcus Desiderata wanted no longer to live in the dark.  It all came to a head when he surrendered to the struggle to make a credit rating worth living for and chose to have a little lightness - a little delight.

As happens in those moments of the dark night in the Bog of Allen the Outsider appears.  This is the one who has been to the Bog and survived the fall into the deep of that place where the light is extinguished but you are still in some little way credible or creditable. The Outsider arrives when you are ready to be wounded.

The Outsider comes with a sword.  This is a sword forged in the fires of the smiths of the Tuatha de Danaan - the beautiful people.  This sword has been broken seven times and each time it is broken the metal becomes harder and the edge becomes sharper.  The sword is two edged but cuts only one way.

It is a sword that only the Outsider can use to wound those who are ready to be cut to the very core of their credit rating. Those who are ready to know what it means to be poor in spirit and to reclaim their true PIN.

The sword is a sword of light.  It has a name.  It is called by the Tuatha de Danaan "The Merciful One."  Only those versed in mercy can use it.  Its edge is so fine that it cuts through all illusion to the core wound that all who ever live will suffer.  This is the wound called "The Separateness."  

With this magic sword of light the Outsider cuts through the core illusion that you are ever separate from Love, that you can ever be separate from Love and that you have ever been separate from Love.  With this sword called "The Merciful One" the Outsider cuts away the Bog in you that bogs you down in the deep of doubt and fear and the idea that you are not a credit to Creation.  

This cutting away of illusions leaves a scar.  Sometimes it is visible sometimes not.  It is there to remind you of where you have been.  This scar is there to remind you of the illusion of separateness from Love.  It is there to remind you of your personal identification beyond the time when you thought that living had to be earned though struggle and fear and limitation.

If you are willing, then the Outsider will take you into a stream where he will bathe your wound and take you into its heart.  There you will find a strange thing.  You will see that inside the wound is the wonder that you seek.  This is why these words wound and wonder are rooted from the same source of light.

Follow the stream and you will come to a field beyond the time of your life.  There you will begin to change your credit rating.  There you will become a real customer.  You will become accustomed to flow.  There you will become accustomed to not feeling bogged down by time.  

You can bank on your credibility as a unique expression of Love in form.  This is the Bank of Life and it gives you unlimited credit for the fact that it loves you into existence in every moment and forever.

With this Bank you have to do only one thing.  You have to trust the way it gives you credit for being accustomed to living in form.  You have to become one who is an insider so that you can become an Outsider.  One who lives outside the world of time. One, who when needed, becomes a walker between the worlds.  A walker between the worlds of time and the timeless for the glory of Love.

Marcus Desiderata lives in a field.  He lives alone and has very simple needs.  People say of Marcus that he lives a life of poverty but Marcus is a rich man.  Marcus banks with a bank that gives him unlimited credit.  One time, for a long time he forgot who he could bank on.  Now he knows the real secret held in his PIN his personal identity - the one he was given before the time that he was born.

The End

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