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Category Archives: Philippians 4:7

sunday, august 12, 2012, bailey, colorado

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in air, aura, balance, breath, cloven hoof, energy, fleabane, Job 33:4, khi, Matthew 5:16, negative, peace that passeth all understanding, Philippians 4:7, positive, shantih

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“Royal Colored Fleabanes Over Fallen Deer’s Cloven Hoof” -photo by Stephen Bort 8.12.2012 10:40 am

“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”  Job 33:4

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.”  Matthew 5:14

“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”  Philippians 4:7

~

Khi – deeply breathe in.

Aura– hold and radiate outward the breath, balancing air and energy, plus and minus.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih – “Peace that passeth all understanding.”

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friday, august 10, 2012, bailey, colorado

10 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in air, aura, balance, breath, energy, Genesis 2:7, khi, ladybug, Luke 11:36, negative, peace that passeth all understanding, Philippians 4:7, positive, rock painting, shantih

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“Fading Ladybug On Child’s Rock Painting” -photo by Stephen Bort 8.10.2012 11:43 am

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  –Genesis 2:7

If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.  –Luke 11:36

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  –Philippians 4:7

~

Khi – deeply breathe in.

Aura– hold and radiate outward the breath, balancing air and energy, plus and minus.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih – “Peace that passeth all understanding.”

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thursday, august 9, 2012, bailey, colorado

09 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in air, aura, balance, breath, energy, fleabane, khi, negative, peace that passeth all understanding, Philippians 4:7, pine cone, positive, shantih, T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

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“Risen Fleabanes and Fallen Pine Cones” – photo by Stephen Bort – 8.9.2012 10:50am

~

Khi – deeply breathe in.

Aura– hold and radiate outward the breath, balancing air and energy, plus and minus.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih – “Peace that passeth all understanding.”

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Talkin’ near-bedtime, beer-drinking, alchemy blues

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in alchemy, aura, balance, beer, blues, books, breathing, cooking, cousins, death, Eastern tradition, Englewood Colorado, entropy, evil, family, flesh, Flight For Life helicopters, form, Frank Messina, friends, goodness, grandchildren, grandparents, great-grandparents, habit, hospitals, khi, knowledge, laughing, life, media, meditation, moon, parents, peace, Philippians 4:7, poetry, poets, prayers, recipes, school, shantih, T. S. Eliot, Texas, The Moody Blues, The Waste Land, understanding, Western tradition

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It’s 9:45 pm, and I’m at my studio in Englewood, Colorado.  I’m having a can of beer.  A good one.  A Colorado-brewed Scotch Ale.  It’s not past my bedtime anymore because I’m past the age of having to be parented.  In fact, my parents are deceased.  I’m also past the age of caring.  Well, I do care some.  Only about certain things and about certain people.  Right now, there may be a full moon that’s beautifully set in the evening sky above me.  Set like a jewel of some celestial, unworldly kind.  (Did I mention I’m a poet?  Maybe not one of the fine caliber of Frank Messina, but as I stand and breath, I say to this night sky that I am poet.)  If it’s not a full moon, then it’s very close.  Close enough.  I care about the moon.  If the moon disappeared suddenly, I would worry.  It’s always moving, but it always comes back.  People don’t always come back, but I can depend on the moon.

I’m sitting in a folding chair now with the flag of Texas for the cloth part.  I hope it’s not a sin of some kind for having my ass set upon a replica of the state of Texas.  Would this be like mooning Texas?  Doh!  I grew up in Texas, so maybe that makes it okay for me.  My parents, paternal grandparents and paternal great-grandparents are all buried outside of a small town in the Texas Panhandle, so I say that gives me the privilege to have my ass thus set.  It’s nice to have privilege of some kind.  I was schooled in Texas through my twenty-fourth year.  I consider that a fine privilege.  I can depend on that education I received, even if my abilities at humor still sometimes are called into question.

I’m rambling, probably because of the good beer that I’m drinking.  A lot of rambling goes on in Texas, but that’s another story.  I’m in Colorado now where there’s a whole lot of good beer.  It’s late, and the moon is very nice to look at as I type this in my folding chair outside of my studio.  There’s very little wind.  It’s kind of balanced between warm and cool and feels just fine.

The real reason I’m writing this is because of the poem I wrote and posted recently titled, alchemist, which I think is pretty good, thank you.  In fact, I can’t stop feeling it.  My hope is that those who read it won’t stop feeling it either.  It was written to be felt until one’s last breath is taken.  I, for one, have decided that I will.

My aunt’s last breath was taken just last month, less than twenty-four hours after I laughed with her in her hospital room, then pretended to reach out to shake her warm, frail hand when I had to go.  She looked down at my hand kind of funny, then smiled when she understood my stupid joke of shaking her hand instead of hugging her.  I leaned over, hugged her and kissed her on her right cheek.  That was that last time I saw her, and I’m intensely glad that we got to laugh together those last moments.

My cousins and her grandchildren were in the room with her when her breath stopped, and they described it for me later.  A long time ago, I was in a hospital room when my paternal grandfather took his last breath.  I know of the experience and feel strongly that I can speak of it:  that final “peace which passeth all understanding.”  We will all experience that final breath, that final peace that has nothing at all to do with books or words, even Biblical words, or knowledge or understanding of any kind.  And we will all take that peace to the great beyond.  Better to be laughing sweetly than living bitter.

I’d like to try to explain my poem, alchemist, only a little, because poems, like some things, are not supposed to be explained but instead felt, taken deep inside.  I truly do want you to take this poem inside, which I myself will take to the grave with me.

This poem can be taken as a recipe or a prayer or both.  I see it as both.  It can be taken in an Eastern traditional way or a Western traditional way.  I see it as both.

A “Flight For Life” just flew over because a hospital is only a block away.  Critically injured people are taken to and from there all the time, so I always make a sign of the cross when the helicopter flies over.  I can usually see bright lights on in the copters and paramedics’ heads along with their red vests because they’re so close in the air above me.  They’re very loud and always capture my attention whatever I’m doing at the moment.  But, back to the poem.

alchemist is at its heart simply about the act of meditation.  One takes in a deep breath of air.  It mixes with one’s inner energy, one’s “khi.”  The “pluses and minuses,” or the goods and bads, or sacreds and evils or positives and negatives within are balanced.  When one holds a breath in, it’s like an expanding  inner strength, a balanced rainbow of bright light, radiating outwards beyond the flesh, an “aura.”  (Hang in here with me.  Don’t “New Age” out on me.)  When one empties the balanced breath outward, the experience of “peace which passeth all understanding,” from either the final line of T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, or earlier, from Philippians 4:7, takes its place.  This is the recipe, or prayer:  khi + aura =  peace which passeth all understanding.

Try it right now.  “Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade from every room…”  Doh!  Sorry, I accidentally channeled The Moody Blues just then.  Seriously, though, take a deep breath, feel the air and energy balancing the crap in your life down into the good in your life, feel the energy expand outward as if becoming an aura radiating out from your flesh,  let the breath out and then feel the peace.  It’s just a breath for God’s sake!  We all do it.  We have to in order to breathe.  It’s not that you do it.  It’s how you do it.

This is a recipe or prayer which cooks one from within in order that one may be ready to be served to others.  How can an unprepared or uncooked meal be served to others?  It would be an insult, in the least.  Being properly cooked brings one to be brightened.  Properly serving oneself to others is cause for laughter (and of course it’s a nice privilege to be served as well).  You can always tell when one is underprepared or undercooked by what a bummer they are to be around.  Yep.  Too much minus and not enough plus:

“Hay, how ya doin’ there partner?”

“Just peachy, thanks.  Doin’ just peachy.”

“Yeah, well you might just tell that to your face.”

You know the kind.

One’s outer form is imposed on them whether liked or not.  A turkey is a turkey.  A pig is a pig.  A big nose is a big nose.  Plastic surgeons aren’t really hiding anything.  What matters is that the “peace which passeth all understanding “ is prepared within so that it can then be served beyond.  Beyond the flesh.  Beyond the form.

There are other feelings in the poem which are personal to me.  I won’t share those. They’re for my contentment alone.  But the recipe/prayer is for all.  It’s so simple.  Take the air into your energy.  Balance out the shit that media satellites constantly feed you with the good that’s there to be found by just turning the channel in another direction–like towards that very bright moon shining above, or to the Flight For Life helicopters that are so good for reasons that don’t have to be explained to anyone with family or friends.

In a way, the whole thing is like a refrigerator.  Unless it’s consistently plugged in, the cold will very soon become warm, and the food will stink.  The closest scientific term is entropy.  Unless you regularly follow the recipe/prayer, the minus will always overtake the plus just like the warm will always overtake the cold.  Regarding alchemist, one needs to stay plugged in for as often as possible to overpower the minus enough to balance the two.

Here’s the most important point.  One can never eliminate the minuses in life. They’re there as sure as a big nose is there, or a pig or a turkey. The minus has to be cooked through with the plus to reach a balance.  Anything more would be overcooking, or charring.  Life has minuses whether one likes it or not.  The very best you can do is to obtain balance–regularly, until it becomes a habit.

Many people consider meat to be bad, but I can tell you from having grown up in Texas that finely prepared chicken-fried steaks or barbeque ribs or T-bone cuts of steak are as well-balanced a meal as one can ever find.  Although, the “peace which passeth understanding” is many times followed afterwards by an early bedtime with much snoring.

It’s now 11 pm, and the burritos I ate earlier, along with the good beer, are having a similar effect.  A natural effect.  The pluses and minuses in life are plentiful and natural.  Today, and in the days to come, the minuses will, I believe, become even more plentiful.  It makes it even more vital to do whatever one can to balance the two, to stay plugged in.

Khi + Aura = Peace which passeth all understanding.  That ultimate peace will only be found in death and then taken beyond, but in life, it can and should be encouraged within–to the max–at all times, and then also taken beyond oneself, into your family, friends and the world at large.

Before being served to others, one must be properly cooked.  That is the alchemy from the alchemist that turns something base into something of value.  That is the Khi, the Aura and the Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.  And, this is where I wish to end my prayer before bedtime overtakes me at last and leads me to warm dreams of a cooked Steve that brightly laughs and dances with the alchemist in the companionable moonlight with good beers.  Doh!

[the photo and all above text is by Stephen Bort, copyright 2012.]

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Some random thoughts on the Aurora tragedy

23 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in Alvin Toffler, America, Aurora Colorado, Batman, citizens, Columbine High School, elected officials, evil, fiction, Future Shock (1970), God, good, law enforcement, lawmakers, Littleton, Colorado, long vision, mask, medical staff, mental illness, Movie Massacre, non-violence, Occupy Wall Street, Philippians 4:7, President Barack Obama (1961- ), reality, representatives, Romans 12:21, society, sophisticated madness, surveillance, technology, The Joker, troubled individuals, understanding, violence, weaponry

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Traverse City’s (Michigan USA) Annual Hiroshima Candlefloat on the Boardman River was held on Nagasaki Day, August 9, 2010. It marked the 65th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. http://mywheelsareturning.com/2010/08/10/annual-candle-float-on-the-boardman-river/

Jean and I lived less than two miles from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado when that infamous shooting occurred.  I was at work, and Jean was at a bus stop about two blocks away from the shooting.  She saw personnel in fatigues with rifles running in a nearby field toward the school.

We live in Bailey now but were staying overnight at Jean’s parents’ place in Lakewood during, and about 12 miles or so from, the newly infamous Aurora shooting in the early minutes of last Friday, July 20, 2012.

Here are some random thoughts of mine on the Aurora tragedy:

1.)  It takes only one person, for good or evil, to affect a nation.

2.)  Citizens pull the strings of their elected representatives, not the other way around.  The President moves to our citizens’ pain, as does the governor, the mayor, the members of Congress and the city officials–not the other way around.  That’s why you saw President Obama, all of Colorado’s congressmen and many of our states elected officials in Aurora yesterday.

3.)  “… the peace of God … passeth all understanding …”  Phil. 4:7.

4.)  “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Rom. 12:21.

5.)  Regardless of all of the hindsight-rhetoric of people now saying that we need to pay more attention to those close to us who may seem dangerously troubled, and report them, the police will generally not respond until shots have been fired or blood has been spilled.  Besides, we do not need to expand citizen surveillance.

Mental illness should absolutely become a priority of medical staff and lawmakers of this nation–indeed of our world at large–given the proliferation of causes for mental illness within a world seemingly gone mad and seemingly with no long-vision concern for advances in technology and weaponry that increasingly and exponentially allow what Alvin Toffler, in 1970, called “Future Shock” and what I would now term a “present and sophisticated madness.”

What exactly is the character of “The Joker” in the Batman series but a sophisticated and intelligent madman hiding behind his mask–a self-assured, clownish smile?  Our society, now more than ever, allows for such a fictional character to seem to step out from behind the theatre screen and into a very painful reality, as just happened at the Aurora Century 16.

6.)  Violence is not a joke.  There are those in our society who justify violence, like the Occupy Wall Street practitioners who act just as smugly (burn cars, businesses, property; and injure law enforcers) out of an amused sense that they are more sophisticated and intelligent than those who don’t agree with them politically, and that they don’t have time for pleading their case non-violently.  Violence is not a joke, whether a democrat, republican, liberal or conservative or whatever.

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Alchemist: a poem

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by essaybee2012 in alchemy, aura, becoming, breath, khi, Philippians 4:7, shantih, T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (Eliot), Upanishad

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A fresh Sun cooks through me.

Khi — air and energy balance the plus and minus within,

Aura — each breath blushes, surrounds,

Shantih shantih shantih —

“peace which passeth all understanding.”

Laughter brightens, ripens my Face,

its form imposed upon me.

Note:  Shantih (shahn.tee) repeated three times is the formal ending to an Upanishad as well as the final line of T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land.  Eliot, in his notes for the poem, understood the word to mean:  “the peace which passeth all understanding.”  This phrase can be found earlier in the Greek-penned letter of Philippians 4:7 (KJV) as “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

Khi (kee) is the Greek form of the oriental chi.

A portion of this poem, I extracted, revised and submitted to HobGob Press in late December 2012 for publication as: “air and energy balance the plus and minus within. / Each breath blushes, surrounds– / peace which passeth all understanding.”  The portion was accepted for publication on January 1, 2013.  See here for details: “god:  by one hundred poets” and prayers for my sister.

by S.A. Bort  2012

photo:  “buffet at New Riders of the Purple Sage show”, July 18, 2012

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