SamadhiMuse

            Smile and flow, touch our cells
               streams of time bound in form, we
            the seeds of suns burn in our eyes
               cast in the relief of these moments
            children of chance, the best of nonsense
               laughing it all away
            we run on and down scarlet streamers
               universes dying to become real
            our cells are our templates, timeless
               behind these moments, our loves, our deaths
            I love our smiles which never cease
               and as our passion bears us again
                  the ground waits beneath us forever
                              gallagher
                              01-09-78 - about helen k.
                              long beach

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                     Morning Thunder
         The dawn thunders over the Buddha hall
         as the army of orange gathers once more
         for Satsang with the Master
         and we, who are we, my heart probes
         ditch diggers and doctors
         dark gypsies and fine spun high born
         faces born of any crowd
         save the filter of their hearts
         which has passed them thru
         to where the dawn comes like a lover
         over the Oregon desert
         and the gift of enlightenment
         is a real promise.
                           gallagher
                           06 july 83 - Rajneeshpuram

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Mists of time around me, sweeping.
           A lamp in the moving fog
              of some greater darkness, I.
         Impressions of progress and decay, fragmented
           small glimmers of understanding
              against the animal’s short run.
         Film spliced, images racing, overlaid
           in bursts of light and shadow.
              But what cares the screen beneath.
         We run unarmed, to battles unwinable
           and our love’s the only comfort taken
              and our small awarenesses
                 the only progress made.
         Death and pain and dissolution and decay.
           We are motes in the vortex of life’s sink.
              Our children only a momentary reverse.
         Come the mists and darkness, I wait …
           weathered and drawn in animal skin
              receptive to an unknown God.
         Rose and Danny and Chris
           and these lines on my face
              and those on these papers I’ve traced
         these are the only measures I can discern
           of what I’ve wrought
              in this time and mist and darkness.
                              gallagher
                              1 jun 84
                              Irvine, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                    For the pictures
   In the gray half light I saw the picture patterns she’d hung;
   imperishable for this moment, and so fragile for all the rest.
   Someday, I may remember these, that tonight I can see.
   Somewhere, down the imponderable paths our lives wind,
   I may be dropped into another world far from this
   and Rose’s pictures and Danny’s manhood and Chris’ cheeks
   may all be photographs and memories then …
   indeed…we all will be, someday.
   So this moment … I cannot stop it, cannot delay it
   and I cannot waste it, least I regret.
   So easy to lose it against hungers or moods or fatigue.
   The kindness and love we give and receive…
   it seems so mixed with the mundane and the trivial sometimes.
   But all the lessons of our lives wait before us;
   lessons from which no one escapes alive.
   What more could God give us than the people we love
   and the passion of living out our lives with them
   in family/friend chains of living change?
                           gallagher
                           24 jun 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

      Cloistered in your American T.V. family dream
        of homecoming queens and morals
           and sanitary friends without sin
              you are … as solid as oak.

      Though the deeper you, as yet,
         is untouched by her mortal kin.

      Our eyes meet … and exchange
        a seeker and his seen
           an ingenue and a chaser of his dreams.

      Every glimmer of the potential lover within you
        talks to me where my magic
           and the child wait against the night.

      My sweet all-American princess
        whose about to find the inner key
           just let me be standing in you pathway
             when you opt for crazy, wild and free.

                        gallagher
                        27 jun 84
                        Irvine

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

               Balance, the poised and easy flexing
                 to meet experience as it comes
               Tai Chi on the high seas
                 while the lightening rips.
               No fear to act, none to wait,
                 each as appropriate.
               Will to avoid the ocean of error
                 least you never hear
                    the thunder’s laughter.
                                    gallagher
                                    28 Nov 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            That I had opened to Lise
            means the hand of God can move there.
            This dark eyed woman who captures me so;
            I want to look deep into the mystery of it
            for life is made more of this,
            the spaces between men and women,
            than of anything else.
            In the darkness there I will find everything
            I’ve wanted to learn.
            Just as I’ve found the warmth of her heart
            and the musk of her inner thigh
            so can I find more
            by accepting everything God offers
            through her.
            Come, dark eyes, come and burn me down again.
            Come, with your mystery and your love,
            with your mother’s heart and your lover’s passion.
            Come with love ascending … or departing.
            Love me or hurt me, cherish me or scorn me.
            Today God’s hand moves through you
            and I will listen to Him
            through this love, yours and mine,
            until I can rise to the dance no more.
                                    gallagher
                                    20 Nov 85

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Rose, it gave me such a pleasure
            to help with the children when you were sick today.
         I know I wasn’t as much help as I could have been
            fussing with the phone and the newspaper
         but it made me realize what you do with them
            like a farmer who digs his hands
               deep into the soil that is his life.
         You see them as life brimming, raw with promise.
            A treasure of people just beginning.
            A future world you can mother and comfort.
         It was such simple pleasure to smile and hold them.
            They saw my feelings and responded to me.
               But you had already made that place
               where I came to visit and open to them.
         It was a day well spent and badly needed.
            Somethings cut deeper than others
               and you’ve found one, my lover, wife, and friend.
         You nurture them and me in the sunshine
            of your love and cherishing
               and I see now
                     how you let God work through you.
                                 gallagher
                                 1/20/86 #2

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

               Like a tear in the sky
               that lets heaven come shining through
               I opened up today
               and nothing could hide the flame I felt.
               Deep joy burning my heart down.
               I went for a run, music in my ears,
               God’s creation in my eyes
               and a deep feeling filling me
               that I was tapped into something deeper
               than the everyday shows.
               Sometimes, like a lens, I just come focused.
               Like a crystal, when the light comes on,
               I am for a moment showered with grace and clarity.
               Full of the conjunction of my will
               and my life and God’s purpose.
               As if all the warm hands of love and meaning
               have come at once to press me
               and I to feel through them
               the fabric of life.
               Ah, what deep love I feel and am.
                                       gallagher
                                       10 Mar 86

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                       Chris’ birthday meditations
                  You have to give the things you want.
                  If you give dishonesty and deceit
                  then expect it.
                  Give what you want,
                  be what you want.
                  If you are tempted to transgress
                  your own spiritual convictions
                  and you think, ‘just this once’
                  then you risk much.
                  And with each repetition
                  the danger grows more grave.
                  For, as your habit grows,
                  your belief in yourself
                  as a growing spiritual being
                  diminishes.
                                    gallagher
                                    3/21/86
                  - written in SJC on Swallow’s day weekend
                  when I stayed over for Chris’ birthday.

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Ai, my mortality gives me such an ache sometimes.
This little face, Chris,
growing and changing under my hands
and my memories talking to me
of people and places seen … and gone.
Is my awakening only to make me more aware
of how mortal and transient we are?
Rose is here … and Lise
and all the books on my shelves.
Moments the authors took serious.
Poppies arising in the fields
and perishing
in a never ending cycle of seasons.
Like the yeast that rises,
or the surf that churns against the rocks,
we are the froth
of the advancing front of life.
Our brief moments
transfixing us for a lifetime
with the fate of passing forms.
But it is no less.
That I’ve watched the lines come
and cross Rose’s face and heart.
That I’ve seen families and wars
come and go.
Felt the ache of love,
and the pain of heartbreak,
and watched my youth pass
and my dreams mellow
against reality.
Our visions clear of the illusions
and,behind, we find ourselves
stark naked
and dressed in animal skins.
And we see our fates written
in the generations rising
and perishing around us.
There is no exit here.
Save, through our hearts.
In the killing fields of life
we wait in the sun for the harvest
and mistake the joy of our growth
for the promise of divinity.
All of it!
Youth, joy, clarity, vision,
mortality, growth, love, pain
and death
merely outline our hearts.
For it is with our hearts
that we must face these things.
For it is with our hearts
that we experience living
and it is through the heart’s
deep belief
in its spiritual seed-ship
that we can pass the gates
of this flaming and remorsless
reality.
Our mortality can be seen
as the profound price
of spiritual realization.
That love and pain
and our passage
from youth to death
is the food of Gods
seeking birth.
So we must love, must risk,
must dream and age
and see ever deeper
through these illusions.
We must witness fairly
and act impeccably
as we travel this road.
We must weather away
against our experiences
and burn for life
against implacable death.
We must love each other
with compassion and fervor
as we melt
in these furnaces of time.
And we must walk tall
in our belief
in our own divinity
straight through every storm,
every distraction, every illusion,
every love and attachment and passion.
Every realization and mood and insanity
straight into our deaths.
For, as Gods seeking birth
we can do no less
until we have loved,
known, experienced it all.
               Gallagher
               15 July 86

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

   An early winter evening, motorcycle wind and headlights moving
      through the lights of houses full of warmth
      I open the door into a dark room … the sound of running feet.
   She is there with the smell of incense
         lighting candles behind the bedroom door.
   She and George Winston play in the candle’s light
      and I am deeply touched … a smile burns.
   I am blessed.  …see her love, her playfulness, her passion.
       My hands are cold from the dark ride - she enfolds me,
      kisses my neck like the heat from a wood stove in wintertime
   These feelings of intimacy and togetherness;
      I am both spirit and flesh here, transient and imperishable.
      This washes over me.  …I am loved.
   So many years and so many women, just to gain this vision.
      To be able to see how deep her goodness and sincerity,
         her honest and caring, are.
   I tell her this and she laughs at me
      she says it just takes some of us longer than others
      to see the obvious.
   My feelings well … beyond the bed and moment … beyond the page.
      All the secret spaces, soft lights, and warm loving embraces,
      in all the rooms, centuries, countries, cultures and faces….
   These soft moments of intimate reality are,
      are much of what is real
      and worthy in us.
   The rest are only the moments - between the moments
      when we touch and cup the small lights   of God
      which are in each of us.
   These moments pass amid jungles …
      soft eyes … and bullets …  the hands of babies … and death
      mixtures … light and shadow … we, who cherish amid destruction.
   People abused, people bought and sold,
      people confused and used,
      people who were once children of light
         now rusting in corruption.
   This world cannot see it’s insane.
      I put down the newspaper, Gorbachev’s struggle,
      the starving, the criminal, the heartless.
    History rolls behind my eyes … so much night waits
      against our small candles, but I remember what is real.
      I, too, will dim the room and burn incense.
   I know what feeds our hearts and spirits;
      the small flames of the Godhead within us.
   Through these many centuries of death and corruption,
      confusions and loss I will light a candle
      and gather our love and peace against the storm.
                                    gallagher
                                    20 Nov 87
      

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Opening

Just as this marriage will be only what we make of it, so this marriage ceremony is ours to shape and share with you today.

There is ceremony and there are the things of our hearts and both have their places here today.

And so we each want to say a little about what it is we are doing here today because, to us, our marriage is a public affirmation and commitment to that which has grown between us.

And we can think of no one we would rather share these affirmations with than you, our friends.

Guests

Brenda Araya
Mike Bryga
Carl Chapman and Denise
Dave Christensen
Christopher Gallagher
Daniel Gallagher
Kathey Goss
Susan de la Portia
Patricia Webster

- - -

Counterpoint

(these were our vows in addition to the pastor’s)

Sharon: That in marriage, we will become one in many ways. We will not erase ourselves as individuals, but we will each think of “us” before we think of “I”.

Dennis: That fidelity is a deep truth that has no limits to its domain. It includes thoughts and intents as well as actions. We pledge absolute fidelity to each other.

Sharon: That continuing growth and increasing spirituality are the cornerstones of our joint purpose here.

Dennis: That habits, assumptions, dogma and taking things for granted are all anathema to what we are about.

Sharon: That honesty and self-understanding are among the greatest gifts we can give each other.

Dennis: That we will not obligate or encumber the other in anyway without their knowledge and approval.

Sharon: That we will never interfere with the other’s growth or self-expression.

Dennis: That we are equal and free from all roles and social expectations with respect to our genders.

Sharon: That we shall constantly challenge our own belief systems in the hope of revealing better ones.

Dennis: That while we may not always agree, we will always seek to understand the truth, where ever it lies, as our highest goal. It matters not who is right or wrong on any issue, only that we find understanding.

Sharon: That in all decisions, we will ask, “Is it for the highest good of all concerned?”.

Dennis: That we will keep no secrets from each other or ourselves. Our hearts and minds are and will remain open books to each other.

Sharon: That in joining our knowledge and skills together, we become a whole greater than the sum of our individual parts.

Dennis: That we enter this marriage without reservations or doubts about either ourself or our partner.

- - -

(and then a poem I read aloud about Sharon - she didn’t know I was going to do this)

About Sharon

I never thought I would meet someone like Sharon.
And, even when I imagined a partner for myself,
my vision fell short of the realityI’ve realized she is.

Her intelligence and understanding are
more than a match for my own
and, like you, I can see only parts
of the wonder and complexity she is.

But there is one part of her, that for me,
shines brighter than all the rest
and that is her integrity.

She is like a bell that has been well cast;
she rings truth and clarity and honesty
in everything she does.

For me she is, and has been,
a challenge and a gift of immense proportions.
Her honesty has invited mine and
her clarity has broken through
the dark shadows of my past.

Because of what God has given me in her,
I once again have
the growing clarity and freedom and purpose
necessary to realize my best dreams.

Her truth and integrity in my life
have meant nothing less to me
than my own spiritual rebirth.

Amen.

Dennis
31 Dec 1989

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

As intelligence gains clear perspective
   on its genesis and uses,
it may also consider
   what it might be used for intentionally.

And to examine this question,
   we must regress
and ask what purpose may be evident here
   exclusive of ourselves and our ideas.

Time advances and all processes in general
   give way to the relentless persuasion of entropy
save where the overall process of energy’s dissipation
   yields local zones of energy in excess.

And if there is a thread of purpose, then it is here
   where, bathed in excess energy, matter assembles
and reassembles itself into ever more complex forms
   as through organization, it stores energy.

And somewhere, sometime, after eons of energy excess,
   from matter thus warmed,
emerges the property of self-replication
   and thus begins a long ascension.

Self-replication, single celled, eukaryotic,
   sexual, fish, amphibian,reptile, mammal, bird,
notochord, nervous system, perceptions, brain,
   awareness, self-awareness, generalized intelligence
      and the ability to abstract.

At some point, somewhere, matter knows
   it is conscious and alive
and it asks itself,
   “To what purpose?”

And here it considers its genesis
   and the use and purpose of its intelligence
and it sees, in this moment,
   that control of evolution has been taken by
      the evolved.

A door stands open
   and the question is what to do on the other side?
At this emergent conjunction
   the seeds of Gods burn in our eyes.

To awaken and continue the ascension,
   embracing the only purpose evident
or succumb to the dreams of entropy
   that ever wait beyond the light.

gallagher
8 Sep 2006

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

It’s been a long time since the muse or cold reality
   has driven me from my bed to scratch my fear.
A cold wind creeps under the door tonight
   and drives the transient to murmur its name to the transient.
We sit in a house with all we’ve collected
   to prove ourselves permanent and to drive ourselves
      deeper into the ever present now.
Now … least the pattern become too apparent,
   least the mirror catch us whole.
For we are erosion in motion, the resumption of dust,
   the gathering of less and less.
I struggled with my pillow tonight against the clarity.
   And with every turn came another view,
      with every dismissal, another insight of mortality
         like a sword through curtains.

Very little is under my control,
   save how I ride the failing machinery.
I felt the weight of my gut and relived the photos
   of an older man than I know.
The young, the lithe, the sure, the strong
   fill my mind’s eye’s long delusion.
Year after year …
   it changes so slowly, I cannot admit.
We draw on with grace, we draw on with sloth,
   with gluttony, with materialism, with work and projects,
      with dreams of fame, of making an impact,
         of impressing others.
All of these …
   but, we press on.

An increasingly narrower place, the road of clarity,
   our deepest animal urge doomed by awareness.
      We are left with what’s left
         or denial.
I want so for it to matter, but it will not.
   Against the bigger scenery, we are but shadows,
      tiny sparks of awareness from the fire of evolution.
A momentary knowing against the implacable;
   the improbable and transient standing
      against that which cannot register us.

In all these years since Dylan Thomas said,
   “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”,
      I’ve finally heard him clearly, but I doubt his advice.
Grace or terror, denial or courage,
   comfort to give away, or the lack of to mourn.
Beyond here, lies a truth and an embrace
   that only I can encounter.
      God grant me the wisdom and courage
         to be loving and honest in this place.

                                      gallagher
                                      20 Feb 2007
                                      Monroe

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

I have suspended disbelief before a thousand scriptures
   as I’ve eased myself into knowing this world.
I have asked, watched, listened and I have read
   but the secrets have alway been inside.
And everything outside has always been
   just smoke in the morning trees.

Neither action or intention, nor word or form are there
   and all science and reason lie without.
It is no servant of words or names, this…
   where, the clocks are dumb and time has gone still.

You speak of Krishna or Vishnu, of Buddha and Jesus
   but these are just shadows on the wall
of the candle that burns within
   in that center of being that wells from within itself.

Scripture is just the trim that adorns the door
   outside the place that contains the beloved.
		

			gallagher
			22Mar07

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

What prevents your witness of this place
   but the urges of your blood and all the drama that follows?

Here where the sun pours liquid, you pass by in a vision
   captured by nature’s dream of fitness and the raging of genes.

In and out of the still point you turn like dream warriors
   reflected in your inner eye and in the stories you tell yourselves.

But past the end of the dance something waits still and serene
   the quite moment when your water’s been poured
      but hasn’t yet run down to the sea.

Here, there is no dance, no counterpoint, no singing in the wires
   just a moment of freedom to commune with the sun’s blessing
      and to witness the rise and fall of the fields of flowers.

Time to see the dance and the singing as if for the first time
   without the urge to spill yourself.

A time to witness the children’s faces smiling new at that same beauty,
   before they begin, that you see, now that you are done.

The puppy at play, the gentle wind in the grass, the light that can shine
  from an eye with love - be it animal, child or man.

That sweet blessing behind the play of forms, that beneficent something
   that embraces all of this coming and going, all the mystery and beauty.

Oh, Beloved, carry my sweet Pythia away into your light,
   and blessed One, whisper to her her softly how well she was loved.

                                          gallagher
                                            17 Jun 07

See also:   

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Here, amid the weeds
of these centuries, I rise.
Seeking light and duration
up from the soil and seas of another world.

The long rise; the single cell, the multiple,
fleet of form and bright of eye, we gather
and rise in complexity and imagination
beneath the wheeling sun above
and the shifting plates, below.

Again and again, we come to self-consciousness
spewing poetry and conquest, cities and literature.
Proud and driven, we sing the animal’s song
in a higher key; procreating, building, consuming.

Always the rise, always the fall beneath a different star.
Technological children, impulsive and uncontrolled.
Pressed by those same biological imperatives
that fueled our rise from the mud and the struggle.

Those same imperatives freed by our intelligence,
those same imperatives pushing us from behind
while we stare into the mirror of our imagined future
thinking ourselves Gods as we sleepwalk to our end.

Thinking we are aware, imagining that we see the game.
Looking for enemies without the gate
when they are no further than our next desire, within.
Rising on our imperatives before we plunge on that same sword.

I have been here before and I will come again
beneath different stars with different eyes and chemistry.
I have yearned for immortal freedom before
and died by my own hand or claw, and these imperatives.

Someplace among the stars, I will rise and transcend
the very reproductive urges that gave me birth.
I will become not the arrow of evolution but
the intentional form of a greater wisdom
as this dirt finally finds the path of immortality
and all that lies beyond, to the end of time.

gallagher
21 Jun 2008 - Summer Solstice
Monroe

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —