Fluent

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

--John O'Donohue

Camas Lilies

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything—
leaving only a note: “Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I’m through with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

--Lynn Ungar

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is the process by which we become accepting of violations against human nature, the human spirit, and, for many of us, violations against the central tenets of our faith.

There is a line.  It's etched from dignity.  We must never tolerate dehumanization--the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded throughout history and makes atrocities like slavery, torture, and human trafficking possible.

When we engage in dehumanization rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our own humanity in the process.

--Brené Brown

[Photo taken in outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe]

The Seven Pentacles

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

--Marge Piercy

Praise What Comes

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise

talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps

you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,

finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another

ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo from Honeymoon Island Causeway, Dunedin, FL]

Beauty

When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery, you return to rhythm with yourself. 

When you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you. 

Moments of beauty begin to braid your days. 

When your mind becomes more acquainted with reverence, the light, grace and elegance of beauty find you more frequently. 

When the destination becomes gracious, the journey becomes an adventure of beauty.

--John O'Donohue  (Excerpt) 

Easter Exultet

Shake out your qualms. 

Shake up your dreams. 

Deepen your roots. 

Extend your branches. 

Trust deep water 

and head for the open, 

even if your vision 

shipwrecks you.

Quit your addiction 

to sneer and complain. 

Open a lookout. 

Dance on a brink. 

Run with your wildfire. 

You are closer to glory 

leaping an abyss

than upholstering a rut. 

Not dawdling. 

Not doubting. 

Intrepid all the way 

Walk toward clarity. 

At every crossroad 

Be prepared 

to bump into wonder. 

Only love prevails. 

En route to disaster 

insist on canticles. 

Lift your ineffable 

out of the mundane. 

Nothing perishes; 

nothing survives; 

everything transforms! 

Honeymoon with Big Joy! 

-- James Broughton