One of the mighty illusions in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness: that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people who are most free from pain. 

--bell hooks

Be patient with everyone, but above all, with yourself. I mean, do not he disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. I am glad you make a fresh beginning daily. There is no better means of attainment to the spiritual life than by continually beginning again, and never thinking that we have done enough. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own. He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.

--Saint Francis de Sales

Vira - Hero

Truly strong

among those 

who think themselves 

strong.

Truly unafraid

among those 

who hide their

fear.

A hero

among those

who talk of heroes.

Don't be fooled by outward signs--

lifting heavy things

or picking fights with weaker opponents

and running headfirst into battle.

A real hero 

walks the Path

to its end.

Then shows others the way.

--from The first free women, by Matty Weingast

Coming Together

It seems too slow,

this moving toward each other,

toward peace.

The heart is eager for union,

longs for grounding between continents,

longs for connection, for wholeness,

instead of all this fracture.

Do the tectonic plates

remember what it was

to be Pangaea? Can the heart

remember a time before

it was defined by rifting

and brokenness?

I have read that the next supercontinent

will form in 200 million years—

that we’re halfway through

the scattered phase.

Oh, we are so scattered.

They say the pace of the plates

is comparable to the speed

at which our fingernails grow.

Oh, so slow, this coming together.

Yet it happens. It happens.

Let the heart know

what the earth knows: It happens.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The Grand Quilt

I don’t believe we can stitch together

only scraps of beauty, squares of light.

I don’t believe in a quilt that doesn’t also

have patches of sorrow, blocks of ache.

Such pieces are, of course, much harder

to want to stitch in. But it matters

that we do not exclude them.

It matters that we don’t pretend

they do not exist.

It matters that we sew every piece

into the grand cloth.

Now I know it matters

how we sew these pieces in,

perhaps using our finest silk thread,

perhaps with an elaborate stitch

our grandmother taught us,

or perhaps we must use

a stitch we make up

because no one ever taught us

how to do this most difficult task—

to meet what at first seems unwanted

and to incorporate it into the whole

knowing everything depends on this

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"Just a minute," said a voice...

"Just a minute," said a voice in the weeds. 

So I stood still

in the day's exquisite early morning light.

and so I didn't crush with my great feet

any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by

where I was passing by

on my way to the blueberry fields,

and maybe it was the toad

and maybe it was the June beetle

and maybe it was the pink and tender worm

who does his work without limbs or eyes

and does it so well

or maybe it was the walking stick, still frail

and walking humbly by, looking for a tree,

or maybe, like Blake's wondrous meeting, it was

the elves, carrying one of their own

on a rose petal coffin away, away

into the deep grasses, After awhile

the quaintest voice said, "Thank you." And then there was silence

For the rest, I would keep you wondering.

-- Mary Oliver

I cannot tell you

how the light comes.

What I know

is that it is more ancient

than imagining.

That it travels

across an astounding expanse

to reach us.

That it loves

searching out

what is hidden

what is lost

what is forgotten

or in peril

or in pain.

That it has a fondness

for the body

for finding its way

toward flesh

for tracing the edges

of form

for shining forth

through the eye,

the hand,

the heart.

I cannot tell you

how the light comes,

but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way

into the deepest dark

that enfolds you,

though it may seem

long ages in coming

or arrive in a shape

you did not foresee.

And so

may we this day

turn ourselves toward it.

May we lift our faces

to let it find us.

May we bend our bodies

to follow the arc it makes.

May we open

and open more

and open still

to the blessed light

that comes.

   - Jan Richardson

 Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance.

-Morgan Freeman, actor and producer

Winter Grief

Let the rest 

in this rested place 

rest for you.

Let the birds sing quietly

and the geese call

from far off

and let the sky race

from west to east 

when you cannot 

lift a wing to fly.

Let evening trace 

your loss in the branches

against a fading sky.

So that you can give up

and give in

and be given back to,

so that you can let

winter come and live

fully inside you,

so that you can

retrace the loving path

of heartbreak 

that brought you here. 

So you can cry alone

and be alone

so you can let yourself alone

to be lost,

so you can let the one 

you have lost alone, 

so that you can let

the one you have lost 

have their own life 

and even

their own death

without you.

So that the world

and everyone who has ever lived 

and ever died can come and go 

as they please.

So you can let yourself not know, 

what not knowing means.

So that you can be

even more generous in your letting go

than they were in their leaving.

So that you can let winter 

be winter.

So that you can let the world alone

to think of spring.

…

WINTER GRIEF 

From THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD

Poetry by David Whyte

Stubborn Praise

Bless the unkind, the mean, the petty

who remind us how not to move

through our lives. True, we can allow

the anger of others to turn us bitter,

fool us into thinking the whole world

is made of nettles ready to sting us

wherever we touch. But let's instead

go around stubbornly praising those

whose hearts stay closed, though we

can't yet see the line of light shining

beneath the locked door, though we

can't quite trust that kindness stirs

in each of us like the child we were,

wanting only to run through a field

with friends at dusk, holding hands

and chasing the sun.

—James Crews

While we can’t control what’s happening around us, we can cultivate the capacity to be with what is with more ease, joy, and freedom.

--Sebene Selassie

Kinds of Silence

After heavy snow.

After the last breath.

Before lightning strikes.

Before the first breath.

In a spider’s web.

In a musical rest.

Of a sleeping dog.

Of a stone general’s breast.

With an old friend.

With a favorite brother.

From the mouth of God.

From a cold mother.

On closing a book.

On fearing what’s to come.

Under a witch’s spell.

Under a dictator’s thumb.

By a frozen river.

By a stone that’s leaning.

At the end of a war.

At another war’s beginning.

-- Elisabeth Murawski

Sudden Hymn in Winter

What if, after years

of trial,

a love should come

and lay a hand upon you

and say,

this late,

your life is not a crime

--Joseph Fasano

Splendor

One day it's the clouds,

one day the mountains.

One day the latest bloom

of roses - the pure monochromes,

the dazzling hybrids - inspiration

for the cathedral's round windows.

Every now and then

there's the splendor

of thought: the singular

idea and its brilliant retinue -

words, cadence, point of view,

little gold arrows flitting

between the lines.

And too the splendor

of no thought at all:

hands lying calmly

in the lap, or swinging

a six iron with effortless

tempo. More often than not

splendor is the star we orbit

without a second thought,

especially as it arrives

and departs. One day

it's the blue glassy bay,

one day the night

and its array of jewels,

visible and invisible.

Sometimes it's the warm clarity

of a face that finds your face

and doesn't turn away.

Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,

that will radiate farther

than you might imagine.

One day it's the entire day

itself, each hour foregoing

its number and name,

its cumbersome clothes, a day

that says come as you are,

large enough for fear and doubt,

with room to spare: the most secret

wish, the deepest, the darkest,

turned inside out.

-- Thomas Centolella

From Views from along the Middle Way

to hold

So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I

make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,

we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,

measuring by eye as it falls into alignment

between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,

she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we’ll lie down and not get up.

One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize

what we love, and what it takes

to tend what isn’t for our having.

So often, fear has led me

to abandon what I know I must relinquish

in time. But for the moment,

I’ll listen to her dream,

and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling

more and more detail into the light

of a joint and fragile keeping.

-- li-young lee

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

Spell to be said against hatred

Until each breath refuses they, those, them.

Until the Dramatis Personae of the book’s first page says, “Each one is you.”

Until hope bows to its hopelessness only as one self bows to another. 

Until cruelty bends to its work and sees suddenly: I.

Until anger and insult know themselves burnable legs of a useless table.

Until the unsurprised unbidden knees find themselves bending. 

Until fear bows to its object as a bird’s shadow bows to its bird. 

Until the ache of the solitude inside the hands, the ribs, the ankles. 

Until the sound the mouse makes inside the mouth of the cat. 

Until the inaudible acids bathing the coral.

Until what feels no one’s weighing is no longer weightless.

Until what feels no one’s earning is no longer taken.

Until grief, pity, confusion, laughter, longing know themselves mirrors.

Until by we we mean I, them, you, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger.

Until by I we mean as a dog barks, sounding and vanishing and

    sounding and vanishing completely.

Until by until we mean I, we, you, them, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger, the lonely barking of the dog before it is answered.

--Jane Hirshfield

Too lazy to be ambitious,

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

--Ryokan

After Love

Now that you have lost

the way you'd taken,

walk out through the new moon

in the spruces

and lie down in the deep leaves

of the clearing.

Listen: they are still here,

the wild things,

migrations moving on again from winter.

All your life

you heard a word 

of the singing,

all your life 

admitted just a bit of it;

all your life

you played your one

small part.

Wake now. Stay here

with your parting

arms

and do it, finally

do it: open

to the whole of it, the whole of it,

the wind that sings

what's been since the beginning.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

There is no one

you're betraying

in your changes

when you become the whole wild song of what you are.

--Joseph Fasano

I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

Reaching Back From Here

Reaching back from here

All that I remember of my life

Are the great round rocks and not

The unimportant stones.

I know that I experienced pain and yet

The scars have healed so that

I am like the tree covering itself 

With new growth every year.

I know that I walked in sadness and yet

All that I remember now

Is the soothing autumn light.

I know that there was much to make my life unhappy

If I had stopped to notice how

The world sings a broken song.

But I preferred to dwell within

A universe of fields and streams

Which echoed the wholeness of my song.

-- Nancy Wood, in Many Winters

We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness. It saves us from ambiguity. It has an answer for every question: "There's just no point." Hope, on the other hand, is messy. If it might all work out, then we have things to do. We must weather the possibility of happiness. 

--Jarod K Anderson, the CryptoNaturalist

 

Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard.

--Morgan Harper Nichols

We need a politics of tenderness more than ever. Not tenderness as capitulation to particular conclusions that have already been made. Not tenderness as "if you don't see the world as I do, there's something wrong with you." But tenderness as the nurturing of grace that allows something different, something even beautiful, to be born in the midst of the fires. 

--Báyò Akómoláfé

Praise Song

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

-- Barbara Crooker