Sometimes

 Sometimes you have to leave

what you think you know

behind.

No one ever really wants to do this.

Knowing things

thinking we know things

can be very comforting.

All day, soul whispers

what I need to know.

I don't hear her 

until I lay aside

cherished beliefs and assumptions

until I dare to be with the not-knowing.

And then...

Well, that's the risky part, is isn't it?

There is no telling what living an ensouled life

might ask of us.

--Oriah House

Matins

 I arise today

Blessed by all things,
Wings of breath,
Delight of eyes,
Wonder of whisper,
Intimacy of touch,
Eternity of soul,
Urgency of thought,
Miracle of health,

Embrace of God.

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.

--John O'Donohue

(Excerpt from "Matins'" in To Bless the Space Between Us)

I want to age like sea glass

I want to age like sea glass. 

Smoothed by tides, not broken. 

I want to ride the waves, go with the flow and feel the impact of the surging tides.

When I am caught between the rocks and a hard place, I will rest. 

And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me where I belong.

I want to be picked up and held gently by those who delight in my well-earned patina, 

And appreciate the changes I went through to achieve this luster.

I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts,

But because of them. 

I want to age like sea glass.

--Bernadette Noll

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I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean.  I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass – made not weak but supple.  I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next.  Not stuck – just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause.  And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along – just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina.  Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.

--Bernadette Noll

For Your Birthday

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing-day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being. 

--John O'Donohue

[Happy 3rd birthday to our favorite twins.]

How To Kill a Poem (A cautionary tale)

 I killed a nascent poem today;

it hopped upon my shoulder.
Cocked its head in a curious way;
became a little bolder.

I coaxed it to my open palm,
could feel its restless toes;
assured it that I meant no harm;
that’s how seduction grows.

What happened next is far from clear,
how things between us changed.
I pounced upon its innocence
and sought to rearrange

the placement of its feathers,
the brightness of its eyes.
The shape and substance of its song
I coldly criticized.

The urge to overmaster
I no longer could resist.
It tried to fly away from me;
I squeezed it in my fist.

The minutes passed.

My hand grew cold,
for it held only death.

(so)

I tossed it on the dead poem pile
where it may join the rest.

--Deborah Barchi

On the Other Side of the Door

On the other side of the door

I can be a different me,

As smart and as brave, as funny or strong

As a person could want to be.

There's nothing too hard for me to do,

There's no place I can't explore

Because everything can happen

On the other side of the door.

On the other side of the door

I don't have to go alone.

If you come, too, we can sail tall ships

And fly where the wind has flown.

And wherever we go, it is almost sure

We'll find what we are looking for

Because everything can happen

On the other side of the door.

--Jeff Moss

Photos taken in Dublin, Ireland

Tomorrow’s Child

What is hope?
It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks.
It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word.
It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe.
That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of actual; and in a miraculous and unexplained way life is opening up creative events which will open the way to freedom and resurrection- but the two- suffering and hope.
Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair.
But, hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté, and drunkenness.
So let us plant dates even though we who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we see.
That is the secret discipline.
It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience and a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints, the courage to die for the future they envisage.
They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hopes.

--Rubin Alves

Grace After Meals

We end this meal with grace

For the joy and nourishment of food,

The slowed time away from the world

To come into presence with each other

And sense the subtle lives behind our faces,

The different colors of our voices,

The edges of hungers we keep private,

The circle of love that unites us.

We pray the wise spirit who keeps us

To change the structures that make others hunger

And that after such grace we might now go forth

and impart dignity wherever we partake.

--John O'Donohue

Nothing Twice

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

Wistawa Szymborska