Blessing for peace

As the fever of day calms towards twilight

May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,

May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,

May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war

Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other

A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace

Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.

That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,

That our swords be beaten into ploughshares

And no hurt or harm be done

Anywhere along the holy mountain.

--John O'Donohue

Useful

This is my one prayer,

one intention carried

in the clay of skin:

to be a useful cup

fired in the kiln of life.

Cracked as I am, shaped

by flawed but caring

human hands, let me hold 

what is mine to hold,

then give it back,

transformed by the keeping,

to anyone thirsty enough

to receive it.

--James Crews

Blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

—Jan Richardson

from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

These Mornings

All these mornings

are one morning;

over and over I am

greeted by the new day—

who greets me but

this Self that is your Self?

Beauty flows fresh,

mist and light glowing

in the valleys, brilliance

of gold breaking through

the leaves and branches

of the trees. All around

me the treasures of

the soul have gathered

as beings, as the created

newness of the World.

If I could ask for

any gift to be given

to us all,

over and over

it would simply be

This!

This!

This!

--Richard Wehrman

Because the Frost Is Late This Year

The nasturtiums have flourished enough

to escape their bed, and long, round

stems stretch down from the wooden

box and run between rows along the garden

paths, and it’s a freaking insurgence

of blooming, a mutiny of beauty, a

rebellion of splendor and my god if

I don’t just stand here in the paths, stunned

by the unlikely blessing, cursed with my

knowledge of how quickly it all can die, but

today, just look at it, today, I don’t even

try not to praise it, instead I stand in

the midst of improbable glory and fall

in love with all these gold and orange

petals and wide rounded leaves, barely

able to breathe past the ache of how all

we love will leave us—even the wildest

of blossomings, even the most unruly

of beauties, even what looks as if it’s

so alive it could take over the whole world.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

From a Country Overlooked

There are no creatures you cannot love.

A frog calling at God

From the moon-filled ditch

As you stand on the country road in the June night.

The sound is enough to make the stars weep

With happiness.

In the morning the landscape green

Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.

The day is carried across its hours

Without any effort by the shining insects

That are living their secret lives.

The space between the prairie horizons

Makes us ache with its beauty.

Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue

To the farthest cold dark in the universe.

The cottonwood also talks to you

Of breeze and speckled sunlight.

You are at home in these

great empty places

along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.

You are comfortable in this spot

so full of grace and being

that it sparkles like jewels

spilled on water.

-- Tom Hennen

From Darkness Sticks to Everything.

In the Community Garden

It's almost over now,

late summer's accomplishment,

and I can stand face to face

with this music,

eye to seed-paved eye

with the sunflowers' architecture:

such muscular leaves,

the thick stems' surge.

Though some are still

shiningly confident,

others can barely

hold their heads up;

their great leaves wrap the stalks

like lowered shields. This one

shrugs its shoulders;

this one's in a rush

to be nothing but form.

Even at their zenith,

you could see beneath the gold

the end they'd come to.

So what's the use of elegy?

If their work

is this skyrocket passage

through the world,

is it mine to lament them?

Do you think they'd want

to bloom forever?

It's the trajectory they desire—

believe me, they do

desire, you could say they are

one intent, finally,

to be this leaping

green, this bronze haze

bending down. How could they stand

apart from themselves

and regret their passing,

when they are a field

of lifting and bowing faces,

faces ringed in flames?

-- Mark Doty

Citizen Of Dark Times

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.

When things go wrong, do right.

Set out by the half-light of the seeker.

For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.

We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.

Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.

Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.

Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.

Keep seeing what you are not saying.

Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.

--Kim Stafford

From “The Case for Hope” by Rebecca Solnit

"The future is bigger than our imaginations. 

It’s unimaginable, and then it comes anyway. 

To meet it we need to keep going, 

to walk past what we can imagine. 

We need to be unstoppable. 

And here’s what it takes: 

you don’t stop walking to congratulate yourself; 

you don’t stop walking to wallow in despair; 

you don’t stop because your own life got too comfortable or too rough; 

you don’t stop because you won; 

you don’t stop because you lost. 

There’s more to win, more to lose, others who need you.

You don’t stop walking because there is no way forward. 

Of course there is no way. 

You walk the path into being, you make the way, 

and if you do it well, others can follow the route. 

You look backward to grasp the long history you’re moving forward from, 

the paths others have made, the road you came in on. 

You look forward to possibility. 

That’s what we mean by hope, 

and you look past it into the impossible 

and that doesn’t stop you either. 

But mostly you just walk, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. That’s what makes you unstoppable."

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— 

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

--Louis MacNeice

Burning the old year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I did’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

 

--Naomi Shihab Nye

When Augusta Showed Us a Two-Minute Video of Starlings

Though I don’t have wings

and though I cannot fly,

with my whole body, I felt it,

the longing to be so aware

of all that is around me

that I, too, might move through the world

like a starling, veering and rising,

turning and dropping, whirling

and doubling back in an elegant

response to what my neighbors

are doing. Does the starling

harshly judge its neighbor

when it flies the other direction?

Does the starling worry

it’s not good enough

to be in a murmuration?

Is it jealous of how its neighbors fly?

Does it wonder how

to get out of its own way?

Such human questions.

How would it be to wholly trust

we are all moving together

in some great mysterious dance?

Now I can’t stop thinking

of what Augusta said:

When we move together,

we like each other more.

It takes just one thought

to inspire a change in course.

What might happen now

when I walk out my door?

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Why I Should Hike Every Day No Matter What

I didn’t know how trapped I was

in my own busyness until,

walking past a quiet lake

and up through a lush spruce forest

I felt how with each step toward tree line

more calendar squares disappeared

and all my lists dissolved until

I was nowhere but wading

through waist-high bluebells

with corn lilies rising above my head.

How still my mind was then, still,

as I traversed creeks and clambered

over fallen trees. Still as I climbed

to the place where the clear water

streams down gray cliffs and yellow

monkey flower flourishes on the banks.

I was bathed with gratefulness.

Is it true that to know this freedom

once is to be able to carry it

like a touchstone in my body?

Will the larkspur have any dominion

tomorrow while I’m trapped in a deadline?

Will the scent of summer’s last wild roses

return when I’m scrambling

for just ten more minutes?

Oh freedom, I long to contain you.

That thought makes me laugh.

Yet it’s true. I long to find myself

mid-hustle still linked to the gurgling stream,

its waters so cold I can’t help but gasp

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

--John O'Donohue

"Thudong monks valued wandering as an ascetic practice, as a means of training the mind to face hardship and the unpredictable. Whenever they wandered far from the relative comfort and security of the monastic life, they had to contend with fear, pain, fatigue, hunger, frustration, and distress; and sometimes they risked death. ... [A monk] never knew where he would spend the night, where the next meal would come from, or what difficulties he would encounter. He learned to live with insecurities and discomforts - life's inevitable dukkha." 

- Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections, p. 143

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,

while it calls the earth its home, the soul.

So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its

lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel

before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs

lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,

are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches

all day. You are breathing

patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is

your life, which is so close

to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of

separation. And what does this have to do

with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises

and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red

roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds

as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:

our purest sweet necessity: the air.

-- Mary Oliver

This Poem Should Be a Circle

I wish you the ability to breathe

after pain, to begin again, though

nothing else seems possible.

I wish you resilience: to part like

the ocean and accept like the sky,

to be held like a root.

I wish you survival: to take in life

like a trapped miner finding an

airhole and praising it as God.

I wish you courage: to ask of

everything you meet, “What

bridge are we?”

I wish you chances to listen:

to all that holds us up.

I wish you the-kindness-that-you-are

coming to brighten your face

like orange leaves scattered

at the end of fall.

I wish you endless journey that

seldom appears as we imagine.

I wish you curiosity: to make a

boat of wonder and an oar

of gratitude.

--Mark Nepo

Sabbaths 1993

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away. 

--Wendell Berry

Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity

but she visits me on a regular basis,

and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—

the salt next to the pepper by the stove,

the garbage man ascending his station

on the back of the moving garbage truck,

or I’m just eating a banana

in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.

In other words, she seems down-to-earth,

like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase

and no one’s there to meet her.

It’s a little after four in the afternoon,

one of the first warm days of spring.

She sits on her suitcase to wait

and slides on her sunglasses.

How do I know she’s listening to the birds?

--Billy Collins

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

--Mary Oliver

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

dies young.

--Ann Sexton

Threshold

It has happened.

You thought you had some control

of your life

and that you were in a place

you understood

in a time that moved

from a past you knew

to a future that followed

in a more or less straight line.

But here you are at the edge

of a shore, the shallow waves

washing over your feet

taking the sand you stand on

away and suddenly you wonder

if all the ground beneath you

is disappearing.

You have stepped through the threshold.

The door closed and locked behind you.

You are on the other side.

You try to forget it, distract yourself,

but nothing works.

You check your messages.

The doctor’s office left a number

on your phone.

Is it a blood test result,

survival rate for treatment,

or days left to live?

Now you are alone.

After the panic subsides you stand there

looking around.

Everything is fresh,

colors are vivid,

you can smell scents,

even subtle ones,

and your hearing is sharp.

You feel the breeze on your skin

and the tickle of hairs moving

across your brow.

You are pierced through

with the inexplicable joy

at having nothing.

The sand forms around your foot

and the water wipes out all traces of your path.

Everywhere you turn there is something new

and the space around you

holds you gently

as it spills out and becomes

a part of the expanding world.

So many things are remarkable now.

Here is the freedom that always frightened you.

You have forgotten your name

and it does not matter.

--Newton Smith

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

- Mary Oliver, from Dogfish

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

-Mary Oliver

What the Heart Says

The mind may leap five steps ahead,

devices pinging with new messages,

alerts, alarms. But the heart says,

There is no emergency. That muscle

wanting to unclench, aching to flex

as free as the monarch nectaring

on a Mexican sunflower at the cusp

of autumn. Don’t we all long for

space to pause and draw sweetness

from each bright thing in our path?

Don’t we crave the slowness of that

butterfly perched on orange petals,

coming alive in a way it never can

while in mid-air, wings folding and

unfolding their own form of prayer?

—James Crews