Strephon Kaplan-Williams Books

For every season there is a choice.
A time to die and a time to live,
A time for decrease and a time for increase.

For every beginning there is an ending,
A time for regression and a time for growth,
A time for saying goodbye and a time for greeting.

For anything new the old must go,
A grave must be dug and new seed planted,
A sacrifice made as well as fulfillment created.

The days of our years are numbered by eternity.
What was will never again be.
The songs that have been sung are only an echo.

We are as grains of sand in the infinitude of oceans.
Our consciousness illumines life for only an instant.
We are as nothing in a transcendent now.

And what we have we have not.
What we are we will not be.
What we can become is already
A burden on our shoulders.

Where is my life going? asks the seeker.
To what end are all my choices?
And for what purpose have I been born or unborn?

Yet still will I say my refuge is in what is.
My salvation is in what I do with what life brings me.
My longing is within the sacred.

When I am no more the rains will still fall,
The seasons will swirl into eternity,
And the voice of my lips will be somebody's song.

For I am not alone in my common humanity.
I am not alone in the journey towards wholeness.
I am at peace where the center guides me.

And I shall live in all my dying.

Author Comment: I am moved by the Old Testament Psalm. But when I wrote this years ago, the feeling about life just came to me and spoke in the style of the great psalms. This new "psalm" has inspired many people. The writing of sacred literature still should go on for each new generation that follows. I use it for what it inspires in me, and for how I live my life.

This Dali Crucifixion makes us look up, just as the figures are doing here. Do you see two? People were crucified naked. Dali is still a bit modest about the male genital. At least he is free regarding the minor miracle that the human body is, genetically built from ashes and dust.

Does he not show also that each of us is crucified on what we and others have created for us? One time I had to tell a young woman in therapy with me, caught in her problems, "When are you going to come down off your cross and get going?" From that moment on she left her old life and personality and created a new life for herself.

Why cannot each of us do the same when challenged to it?

Don't look away, as Dali has his crucified man do. Look up, look down, look forward, but look. Face your imprisonment in old stuff and then move on. Life is for the living, and not the dead!

This is my favorite Dali Crucifixion. Note how the man on the cross has been elevated and seems to be looking down at the world. The message of the image is that the event and image of the crucifixion is all in the perspective with which you see Jesus and the crucifixion.

There is no one way to see the Jesus of history. There is no one way to see and experience the crucifixion of Jesus.

Study, learn and experience your own life for what greater purpose than life itself. Is this not the message?

Was he a slave?
Or was he a master?
Did fate overcome him?
Or did he rule?                                                            

Was his name, Jesus?
Or was his name,
You and me?

What did he teach?
Whom did he learn from?
Why was he here?
And why is he gone now?

Was he a man?
Or was he woman also?
Did he have followers?
Or did they betray him?

How did he love?
Who was the father?
Who was the son?
Who the Mother?

Are there no answers?
To any questions?
Is the answer now?
In the heart of the living?
- from the Gnostic