life: acoustic & amplified

Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac

They kept showing up, for days,
dead on the windowsill,
and for days I did nothing about the ladybugs
except to ask if their entering the house
unnoticed and dying before I saw them
was symbolic.
Thinking so was easy.
They symbolized birth and death,
change and rebirth.
It was also possible the tiny beetles
embodied an inborn need
to show themselves,
to turn up in every and any place,
even as the dried-out remains of the once lively.
Or they stood for the burden of being one thing
relieved by becoming another,
which all the world’s children suffer.

This went on and on, and could’ve gone on
forever, so finally I opened the window
and blew them into the wide open
because everything and everyone should get a chance
to be mourned, and they got theirs,
but first they had to die, which is life,
not symbolism.

———

The Symbolic Life by Hayan Charara

Photo by Michael Provost via Facebook

Beloved,
you are my bread and wine,
my peanut butter and jelly, my chocolate.
You are my teacher, my rescuer,
lover of heaven, light of my way.
You are God’s selfie,
and my best mirror.
You are the One in whom I meet my many,
the world’s many, all of us one.
You are my breathing coach,
my soul’s midwife,
the reaching out in me,
lover that lights my love,
comedian in my tragedies,
pitcher my hope pours from.
You are the hole through which
God springs out of my life.
You are the one who knows,
and who never makes fun of me.
Trickster, host and scout,
you hide in every low place,
find the question in everything
show me the holy in everything.
When I burrow into my ruin
you are the one I met there,
preparing a table.
You laugh at my sin, hold my despair,
sleep in my boat, stand on my forgiveness,
walk my way, die my death.
You are my next life, germinating in me.
On my cross, in my grave you wait for me.
You are my resurrection.
And so you are for the whole aching world,
for this holy, spinning universe,
that sings in harmony for you
our thanks to God.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

bird poop heart….#lovelettersonthepath

❤

 

after the last straw 

has changed everything 

about your comfort zoned life

and the free radical of your new way of living

has established a tentative foothold

on the sheer face of the rock

you find yourself 

hanging 

within the jagged spaces 

between the silences

suddenly you see there growing near

within the cracks you hang from

a green vine

with beautiful fruit

ready for your hungriest longing 

luscious

calling

healing

bountiful 

filling

loving

living

deep

juicy

It is not easy to reach, yet

you spend your last ounce of strength

trying

reaching

stretching

claiming your prize

and there you are

forgetting your precarious position on this mountain 

eating with sheer delight

juice running down chins and elbows

until, even the stones, fill with joy

and laugh with delight at your moxie

tomorrow you will bravely face our sorrow

and allow your salt to run 

to heal your wounds

further up this climb you will feel what you need to feel

and let those emotions have their way with you

until you embrace the mystery 

then throw caution to the very winds you stand in the center of

and open your arms wide as you can 

to life

 ❤

Amy Lloyd