Our survival adaptations are so tough, but our wounds are so delicate. To heal, we have to lift the armor carefully- it saved our lives, after all. It’s like moving your best friend off to the side of the path. You don’t trample on her, you don’t hit her with a sledgehammer. You honor her presence like a warm blanket that has kept you safe and sound during wintry times. And then, when the moment is right, you get inside and stitch your wounds with the thread of love, slowly and surely, not rushing to completion, nurturing as you weave, tender and true. The healing process has a heart of its own, moving at its own delicate pace. We are such wondrous weavers…
💞
– Jeff Brown
TO STAND HERE
is to stand
at the center
of circle
after growing circle
and reach
in the mind
for a far circumference
that holds as focus
an interior so far in
so concentrated
with origin
we find ourselves
by looking out
at what looks back,
the lighted edge
of rock and sky,
the sweet
unmoving darkness
over the horizon
that makes
a perfect
beckoning symmetry
to the night
beneath our feet,
the underground
where light cannot live
but whose darkness
makes a ground
on which to stand.
The central
ancestral story
of those who
lived here
looking out
at the same horizon
and the same
surrounding
ground,
who saw a world
that witnessed them
at a privileged
center,
their lives caught
like ours
in the glance
of what lies beyond
only
for a fleeting
moment.
…
From LON’S FORT
From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
– Mahatma Gandhi
I’m not here to live up to your expectations and you’re not here to live up to mine.
Living systems never really settle down.
– John Holland
We were only to sleep for a short while.
Words stuck in thick layers , they are there and then they are gone …and the fire burns day and night…like some drift wood set a blaze on a lonely hill.
Not many know the fire…not many know the Way…
but that fire keeps setting the sun to blaze; Spirit beats within the body and pages are blank…
It is everything, and it is nothing.
Spirit empties one to naked longing, then traps the soul in a loving embrace.
Vowed to live it’s days on earth, as it is in heaven…
Soul , human body with mystery and mayhem…
With preoccupation with the Holy; with adoration won…with words that ache to be heard but have no expression in this realm…
Veil once torn…eye filled with Light…
Worlds riding within worlds…glances, witness, wonders.
The madness that comes, when you know God,
Come back on a black horse, for the fire will chase all the others away.
Ride like the wind, knowing nothing at all….and living the Fire.
Beauty,
Donna Knutson
Above the ground after a brief silence
they resume their war
before they are even out of the graveyard,
climbing over each other
trying to save their own lives,
clawing at some unseen soil above them,
while beneath he rests in peace,
where, after all, we each long to be,
borne to our resting ground,
cherished and at peace,
soon and very soon.
Could I slip beneath the grass
One of the greatest mistakes we make in this life, I think, is losing hope when we don’t get what we want RIGHT AWAY. It takes time to do anything that matters—to change, to learn to love, to build a business or grow a child or grow into ourselves.
—
Sadly, too many of us (myself included) lose heart when we don’t see results RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
—
And when we lose hope, we lose everything.
—
Hope is not this fluffy thing we sometimes think it is. Hope is dangerous. It’s radical. When we hope, we take a tremendous risk, waiting and waking our hearts to something that we know full well may never come to fruition. There are no guarantees in this life. We do not have 100% control.
—
Hope hurts. If it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t hope.
—
And yet I am learning what it means to take LONG view. As I look back over the past 33 years of my life, I realize most of the things I have hoped for have taken DECADES to grow into themselves. It takes a LONG, LONG TIME for things to make sense.
—
Hope trusts the process—that even if we don’t get the thing we want right away, the story is not over. It’s not completely written.
—
Hope is steadfast and unwavering. It keeps going and gong and going.
—
Whatever you’re waiting for, hoping for, wishing for, don’t give up. Keep hoping. Most things don’t make sense until later. Hope is your lifeline. It is your only way home.
“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”
— from LEAP by Terry Tempest Williams
With Leap, Terry Tempest Williams, award-winning author of Refuge, offers a sustained meditation on passion, faith, and creativity-based upon her transcendental encounter with Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval masterpiece The Garden of Delights. Williams examines this vibrant landscape with unprecedented acuity, recognizing parallels between the artist’s prophetic vision and her own personal experiences as a Mormon and a naturalist. Searing in its spiritual, intellectual, and emotional courage, Williams’s divine journey enables her to realize the full extent of her faith and through her exquisite imagination opens our eyes to the splendor of the world. READ an excerpt: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/191447/leap/
On Dec 3, 2014 (2 year anniversary of my living death in the dark night of the soul, I got a post titled Love never Dies from Jen Lemen at Hopeful World http://hopefulworld.org
Here’s a taste of what it said:
I am struck also as I write to you from this wintery desk, that building our capacity for stillness helps so much when the wild comes to our restless souls. Without that practice of being quiet, it’s easy to be scared when our wild, instinctual thoughts pop up. It’s easy to think that they are bad somehow or in need of corralling. But the practice of quiet and stillness helps us recognize our instinctual knowing for what it is: a call to our most true nature. A call to a kind of expression that is more vibrant, more textured, more passionate, more alive–even if it’s a little bit messy. Even if it kicks up a little bit of shame that we are this human, this raw.
So I invite you today to sit with me for three magic minutes. I’ll be right here with you, my own mind a rollercoaster of crazy, of frantic, of nonsensical worrisome things. I’ll sit with you and notice everything in my own soul, while you notice everything in yours and together we will begin to knit together an understanding of what’s underneath that noise: a gorgeous, exquisite tapestry of human longing designed to carry us to an awake magnificent place.
Will you join me?
Setting the timer now.
Let me know how it is on the other side.
With so much love,
Jen
It’s now 3.5 years later and Jen Lemen is still bringing all that, and more to me, to you, to the shaky, hoping world, to the edges of eternity…love never dies.
Today, in this crazy, brutal brutal place, where we ask…
how can these two people be our Presidential choices?
how can people keep killing other people?
how can I deal with the grief and the fear of this?
how can I help?
what is the solution?
what is my part?
Jen Lemen is doing her part. She’s offering Soul Snacks – http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
Amazing gifts to all of of struggling, hungry, hurting, angry, frustrated pilgrims and poets.
Right now she has open enrollment and I have just this…
Don’t wait! http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
Gobble this up, savor it a bite at a time, eat them from start to finish, or nibble from the middle to each edge of crust. Savory, delectable soul-spices involving all your most subtle senses. http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
I
💞
Keep wrestling, burn, scream, let go, melt, let your heart keep breaking for the sake of your heart, keep saying the names of your people, fiercely defend your tenderness, think, grieve, repair, renew, continue to do what’s in your heart to do…each thread matters…each color makes the world more beautiful…
in the end, only love is eternal, only love remains… http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
🔥
AL
We are God’s thread
weaving through the tapestry,
the masterpiece is slowly
created.
Potential for beauty, we can’t know,
unfolding,
becoming,
revealing glory
so bright
it makes the sun squint
and reach for sunglasses.
Brilliance so far beyond ourselves
we go shining into the gray
as we open to the new jewels appearing,
sparkling in the moonlight.
As we step into the needle’s eye
the angels catch their breath,
cheering our blazing garments,
dazzled by the vision
God is revealing through the creation.
As we surrender to the greatest mystery,
the beauty we inhabit
becomes us,
walking in humble clay
eyes out shining the stars
set in the heavens.
Until we totally disappear and all that’s left
is holiness
so pure
all we can do
is
bow in wonder
at ourselves
and give thanks
as the silk thread
becomes liquid gold and silver
pure and simple
glory
as we realize our place in the whole.
We are the temple of our creator.
The home of God.
😎
AL
As deftly and finally as one pulls out a thread
someone is weaving them, gracefully tying them,
minute and irreversible.
In the towering sky, even under the fortress,
root tendrils muscle in and bind ligaments
through an abyss we had been told was absolute.
No enormity of terror
can keep up
with the steady, unseen healing.
Before the assault, the horrible wound,
gaping and exposed,
the stitching has already begun.
Even as we sigh in our own world,
moving on, separate,
we are being sewn in.
In the earthquake, the collapsing mountains,
not a bit of rubble falls
on the path from the temple.
If you could hold your immortal soul
in your hands, you would hardly recognize it
from one moment to the next.
Your grave is already empty.
__________________
Yeah, so, the past month has been an intense one for me in every way. A bit emotionally brutal. We can all relate, I’m sure. It’s shown me a lot of new things about myself, also revealed some new glimpses of this mystical mystery named, so simply, “Love,” in our language.
I’ve been a student of the nature of Love for the past 7 years, which doesn’t seem very long, now that I write it down, but, I have to report, just this short time of study, it has changed me in every area of my life.
My studies are always, first and foremost, practical. To me nothing I ‘believe’ is worth anything if it does not actually work in my living to bring me healing, make me a better human, remove my baggage to reveal my highest and best self, lead me into paths of peace and load my arms with fruit to share with fellow pilgrims along the way…and, so, I began by asking God to reveal what love was and how love worked.
My first flash came in 2009, riding on a CT commuter train from New Haven to Branford, looking at the marsh fly by. I had been asking for some days, intensely seeking, when God showed himself to me as ‘LOVE.’ That brief instant changed everything for me. I experienced the Aleph of The Mystery and left that train, completely changed a flash or, in real time less than 30 minutes…
Many wonderful writers have helped me along this open-ended, unlimited path of discovery on this topic. I must give much beautiful credit to Henri Nouwen, who helped me early on in my excavation of this topic. His revelations, and life surrendered to this mystery, have inspired much learning in my own voyage on this simple, yet so radical, path.
Over these years, I felt lead to share some of my tiny bits of insight with others – it has just been so amazing! So beautiful! So everything – I just wanted others to open to it as well, to learn and heal along with me! Over these years I have learned to be a writer and a poet. Until recently I didn’t feel I could claim those ‘titles,’ but I do now, just another way love has changed me. I am so grateful.
This brings us to yesterday, which brings us to Frederick Buechner’s 90th birthday! Buechner is one of the best, most beautiful, writers ever. Sometimes I stop breathing when I read his words. I won’t say more, at this moment, as this is becoming a very long post, but here’s my best advice: read him!
Recently someone, somewhere, on Facebook, posted words by poet, Fred LaMotte. They deeply touched me and so I ‘friended’ him. Then he began posting his words and I found myself on Amazon ordering one of his books. I received it last week, and it has been moving me into some very deep waters.
Yeah, so, back to yesterday, I re-posted a happy birthday write-up about Buechner and then…
I got this comment from Fred LaMotte:
He was the reason I became a teacher and a school chaplain. When I was a 10th grader at Exeter Academy (near Boston) he was the school chaplain. It was before he became a writer. One dreary morning in late Winter, we were 700 half asleep boys in morning ‘Chapel’ (it was just an assembly really), and decided to read to us. He read the entire 7th chapter of ‘The Wind In The Willows,’ ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’ It was very long and I think I might have been the only one stayed awake. It was amazing. Not only did it show me my first real piece of spiritual writing, but I thought, “Wow! This is his job? Reading to people about the great God Pan? I want to do this!” Thank you Frederick Buechner.
💞
WOW!! Then Fred LaMotte shared that chapter of the Wind and the Willows, ya know, the one that inspired some pretty intense poetry, which is, at this moment plowing up some new fields in my back forty…
I have not read The Wind in the Willows since I was a teenager, and, at that time I remember thinking it was rather stupid. My thoughts being something like, ‘Good grief, what in the heck is this about?’
Yesterday, I finally ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. Yesterday, a gift of love I offered was returned to me, unaccepted. I ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. There’s no right or wrong here, just gift. I choose to be only grateful to continue on in the, ‘yes and amen!’ of it all.
I have no idea what Love (God) will teach me next. I am a very humble beginner. No Master here. Just a girl who cannot believe how lucky I am to be on this narrow road. A very unlikely pilgrim, I. Always wearing inappropriate shoes for climbing these steep hills, but somehow, always getting the view of the most beautiful sunsets imaginable. I guess it’s true what Babe Ruth said, ‘You can’t beat a man who keeps getting up!’
Here’s a song I wrote for my children’s musical about my life of faith, named: The Fantastical Inside-Out-Upside-Down Journey of a Rich Little Poor Girl
You Otter Know (verses spoken in the style of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant/choruses in Sinatra style)
I was walking in the forest
I was feeling all alone
The birds and bees were sleeping,
the weeping willow weeping
Then I heard a little creature
Start moving oh so slow
and the little brook began to play
music with its toes
the woodpecker was keeping time
upon that tall oak tree
and I could not help start dancing
cause I knew it was for me
and as I whirled and twirled about
I came upon a log
and the beaver and the otter (Frank Sinatra style Beaver. Sammy Davis Otter)
were acting more like hogs (pushing each other to get to the log stage with microphone)
and then they each began to croon
they’re words were oh so rare
I stood there for a moment
my foot still in the air
and they sang to me…
You otter know I love you
loved you from the start
(if you’ll beaver me
then I’ll beaver you
You never walk alone)
You otter know I love you
love your precious heart
(beaver me it’s true
I’ve always loved you
You’re never far from home)
and the band it just kept playing
and my happy heart did gasp
Cause this was so much better
than that silly talking a**
uhhh donkey
Then my heart it felt so happy
and my eyes at last could see
That though I hadn’t been aware
You’d never once left me
and as I danced on down that path
I swear I sang this song
The one my friends had written,
which had been there all along
and I sang…
You otter know I love you
loved you from the start
(if you’ll beaver me
then I’ll beaver you
You never walk alone)
You otter know I love you
love your precious heart
(beaver me it’s true
I’ve always loved you
You’re never far from home
💞
AL
Ephesians 1:4
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
New Living Translation
You don’t have to melt
until you are ready.
Remember this:
Each moil of your unoiled joints,
every numb stiff gristle of resistance,
cramp of anger, clabber of shame,
clot of envy, opinion or belief,
is simply a mass of refusal
contracted into “me,”
a particle afraid to waltz
with its field, a wave
that will not settle to its sea,
a sky who thinks it is a cloud,
Relax.
This won’t last long.
Or if it does,
or if the lines make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on the T.V.,
deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand such things.
Its feelings cannot be hurt.
They exist somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime.
Start it in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like.
Look, there’s a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he’ll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you’re busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it’s sex you’ve always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party’s unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don’t think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don’t know what music this poem can come up with,
but clearly it’s needed.
For it’s apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music
when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer than life.
I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I’ll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don’t give anything for this poem.
It doesn’t expect much.
It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house.
And if you’re not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh.
😄
Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
The purpose of poetry is not to create literary criticism. It exists to delight, instruct, and console living people in the sloppy fullness of their humanity.
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
life: acoustic & amplified 