Tag Archives: Parabola Magazine

A Good Question

23 January, 2012 By in Local Faire Tags: , , , 2 Comments

A few days ago while driving around Toronto with a friend, we started a conversation about what books we’ve been reading lately. I remarked that the current theme of Parabola’s Winter issue: Many Paths, One Truth, has led me to an inquiry into the point of view of writers of the “Perennial Philosophy”—a perspective shared by René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Huston Smith, and many others that embodies the timeless and universal principles underlying all the doctrines, symbols, sacred art, and spiritual practices of the world’s religions.

“What’s that all about?” he asked.

“Well, imagine you have a prism,” I tried to explain “and when you hold it in your hand it is clear and uncolored, but when you hold it up to the light, it’s refracted. Suddenly you see all these colors. So the idea is that Divine Truth is one, both timeless and universal, and all the different religions are like different languages expressing that one Truth.”

“That sounds accurate to me,” he said.

“I’ve just started reading into it so I can’t say that I have gotten really in depth on it, but it just seems like such a simple idea. Maybe too simple,” I said.

“Why does it have to be difficult? What’s wrong with simplicity?” he asked.

It was a good question. I had nothing to say, and we started talking about other things. Yet, I have continually returned to that question this week.

From Parabola Magazine’s Weekly Newsletter, January 20th, 2012.

Autumn

5 September, 2011 By in Local Faire Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The sun returns, pushing away the grey sky in forgiveness painted blue. Long shadows appear over the deck and the green of a small ficus tree is illuminated. The wind that rattled the stray beer cans is quiet now; leaving the neighborhood eerily silent and waiting. She gives herself to the television in the next room. He sits on a once white plastic deck chair. He stops, smokes, takes a long sip of coffee—a break from the stream of words. It’s a late Sunday afternoon near the end of summer. He can smell the sourness in the air of autumn approaching. He can taste the acridness, the oranges, the reds, and the rusty browns. He feels the warmth on his skin, tickling the hairs, now golden on his arms. Looking up, he sees the birds dart among the rooftops, gathering together, and a moment later, dispersing again. The sun light settles gently over the trees. He asks himself if he has ever truly seen his backyard before—to have this direct impression of it, without his luggage of words. Has he ever listened to its orchestra of wind and trees? It is as though, behind all the seemingly ordinariness, something struggles to shine through.

From Parabola Magazine’s Weekly Newsletter, September 2nd, 2011. Painting by Andrew Wyeth, “Off at Sea,” 1972.

The Empty Page

4 August, 2011 By in Local Faire Tags: , , , 6 Comments

Dropping the anchor,
To try to find the middle ground.
Down into the “I don’t know” rather than the forms.
There is a hesitation.
In the chest, a question is uncovered.

Is it true?
Grounded in my abdomen,
I see that this turning inward, is just as vast and nebulous
As launching outward.

Opening to where I am, now
At this table writing, and listening.
The weight of this body sitting here on the chair changes
and a fragile silence appears
that is louder than me or you.

Breathing in and out,
in profound exchange.
Of emptying and filling
Silence and sound.

While navigating varieties of lost.
The light in the room shifts and
Something changes.
My abdomen is trying to tell me something
But the language is lost in the process
Of trying to find the right words.

–Luke Storms

Gifts

25 July, 2011 By in Local Faire Tags: , , 2 Comments

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to see the Abstract Expressionist show at the Art Gallery of Ontario here in Toronto. The highlights for me were the shadowy hues of rich purple and maroon canvases from Rothko’s later career. I stood in front of three of these massive paintings that hung in the low light. As I watched the colors vibrate around the edges, I noticed that there was a definite inner response. Although I could not label it, it was a kind of call, invoking a feeling of mystery, and inviting contemplation, silence and reflection. There was a here-I am-and-in this place kind of feeling. I avoided interfering with the process by thinking about it; I just presented myself, and allowed the impression to cut more deeply. It occurred to me that I was receiving a gift. A reminder, that every moment is an opportunity to enter more deeply into the soft silence that lays waiting, behind the surface of our lives.

Mark Rothko once wrote: “When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same, it is a time of tons of verbiage activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large, I will not venture to discuss. But I do know that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.”

May you find numerous pockets of silence this summer.

—From Parabola Magazine’s Weekly Newsletter, July 22nd, 2011.

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