Thy golden Light came down into my brain
And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became
A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,
A calm illumination and a flame.

Thy golden Light came down into my feet,
My earth is now Thy playfield and Thy seat.

Image above (and on front-page mastheads): "Last Light Of July" by Scott Fisher.

Words above: "The Golden Light" by Sri Aurobindo, 8-8-1938, (revised 22-3-1944)
Reference: # 89 in "Les poèmes de Sri Aurobindo" (bilingual edition)
also in "Last Poems" - 11, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry.

We are living in a time of ecological devastation, in which our materialistic culture has had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth until it is in a dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. If we dare to listen, creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance. We can see these signs in the increasing floods and droughts, feel it in a land that has been poisoned with pesticides, and those whose hearts are open may hear the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair, that humanity who was supposed to be the guardian of the planet has forgotten its responsibility and instead desecrates and destroys the earth on a global scale.

For centuries it was understood that the world was a living being with a soul, and that we are a part of this being. Once we remember this in our minds and in our hearts, once we hear the cry of our suffering, dying world, our prayers will flow more easily and naturally. We will be drawn to pray in our own way. There is the simple prayer of placing the world as a living being within our hearts when we inwardly offer our self to the Divine. We remember the sorrow and suffering of the world in our hearts, and ask that that the world be remembered, that divine love and mercy flow where it is needed. That even though we continue to treat the world so badly, divine grace will help us and help the world˜help to bring the earth back into balance. We need to remember that the power of the Divine is more than that of all the global corporations that continue to make the world a wasteland, even more than the global forces of consumerism that demand the life-blood of the planet. We pray that the Divine of which we are all a part can redeem and heal this beautiful and suffering world.

Images above (and on front-page mastheads) by Gretchen Durst Jacobs. Top and front-page mastheads: "Riverside, Looking West" — Middle: "Grant, Bridge" — Bottom: "Clifton Gorge"

Word above: "Praying for the Earth" by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.

“Go on you, get out of here,”
The storekeeper shouts wid a sneer
Old man stumbles widout a say
Resigned to it day by day.

I go on to him and say “what’s up?”
Don’t have a plan, just talk some stuff.
He looks past me, eyes rolling round,
Tries to talk, can’t make a sound.

How do I say what I feel?
Something deep, something real.
Want to say, “you all right,
You child of God in His sight.”

He’s filled wid crap filling his ears
So much garbage, he can’t hear.
Want to do something good,
But he sees a kid, one of the hood.

We reach the alley, his home tonight.
I look around like from the height.
“Thank you,” he says “That couldn’t be fun.
Walking with me like you my grandson.”

I say good night and shake his hand.
Respecting him on holy land.

Images above and on front-page mastheads: by Mary Jane Miller — new work from the series “Line, Blue, and Halo.”

Words above: "A newOld Man" by Nathan Blackwater, a member of Spirit Journey Youth: an Episcopal Native American youth group in Northern Arizona. You can see some videos from Spirit Journey Youth here.