I’m a Perceiver

Alan Rayner
1 min readSep 12, 2020

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‘Digitalis’ (Oil painting on canvas by Alan Rayner, 2006) Oh, that iron fist that hides In a velvet glove; Intoxicating the heart; Whilst ordering its erratic wanderings; Into the hard-edged metronomic beatings; Of a loveless marriage to mechanical objects; So clearly defined; To beguile the seeker of certainty; Could not that purple velvet; That flatters to deceive; Yet restore our child’s play? ; An antidotal, anecdotal softening; Of hard manipulations; That exclude the darkness from the day; Light touching lightly upon the fringes; Of etchings into clay; Where the bodies’ soft life-linings; Can frolic in the summer hay

I’m a Perceiver

I’m a Perceiver

Not a Believer

.

I do not worship

At the altar of idols or ideals

Superhumans or conceptions of perfection

That have no place in real life

Except as archetypal myths

That signpost the limits of our travels

.

Rather, I worship

At the hearth of what comes naturally

Through my sense and sensibility

In sight, sounds, smell, taste, touch and balance

Along with feelings of joy, pain, need, fear, calm, excitement and irritation

All combined in my bodily experience

As I learn what is and isn’t possible

What is and isn’t reasonable

In the world of my imagination

.

Those are the grounds of my faith

In my self and yours

As natural inclusions of life in love

And love in life

Energetic flux and spatial stillness

In receptive & responsive relationship

Not solitary figure(s)

Etched in everlasting stone

.

If this faith singles me out

From the vast majority

Then, so be it

Despite the irony

If you would like to explore more, please feel free to visit http://www.spanglefish.com/exploringnaturalinclusion

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Alan Rayner
Alan Rayner

Written by Alan Rayner

Alan Rayner is an evolutionary ecologist, writer and artist, who is pioneering the philosophy of natural inclusion

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