... I was watching the pool this morning--fish and frogs and eels
under the lily-pads--a slow cold life. They have colour and grace--but
eyes of glass. They move so softly down in the dim coppery light....
I thought of the lakes and the seas, the simple cold of all life--the
coldest and most rudimentary in the great deeps.... Birds were playing
about in the rose gardens, darting in and out of the bamboo clumps and
yucca stalks. Humming-birds were continually fanning the trumpet and
honeysuckle vines.... I thought of the skylarks--throats that open
only as wings beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where the
white gulls flash--the lonely lakes and tarns where the heron cross in
the evening and the loon cries at night--the cypress deeps where the
flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the eagles that cross from peak
to peak, along the spine of the continents.
... And then, of course, it came to me--the old conquest--how we must
lift our consciousness above the face of the waters and put on our
wings.... Many have almost finished with the waters of generation--the
emotional body of man, the same as the planet.... In the beginning, it
was necessary to "go down into the water"--the terms of the baptismal
rite. Regeneration is "coming up out of the water." The struggle
between the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by the faith, and
the lapse of faith, of Peter when he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk
upon his storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he sank saved him
from perishing. Regenerated, he walked with the Lord upon the waters.
I remember, too, the saying, "You must be born again of water and of
spirit----," the story of regeneration told once more....
It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations of the creatures of
the deep, to the winged passages of air and sun and starlight.... We
think that we give up joys of life--we plunge back again and again to
the dim cold waters--our eyes blinded at first by the light, our senses
frightened by the fragrance and the space.... As if the reflected
light of the lower cosmos could compare with the pure radiance above;
as if the love of desire could compare to the glory of the outpouring
heart--the heart filled with light--the fulness of spirit, the ecstasy
of wings.
* * * * *