perhaps we are
saving each other
one song at a time
reborn, drowning
in these oceans of grace
endlessly moving
wind, waves, water
kissing the shore
achingly beautiful
true colors
of black and white
melting together, dancing
in and out
through each other
ever weaving, creating
new life
filling the empty
emptying the full
like music
itself
AL 8/18/14
I look around for a poem today.
I search for words
to flow in a pattern.
Hoping they will fall out –
knowing it’s not that kinda day.
I feel off,
disjointed.
I will have to dig for words today.
Will what I uncover be pretty or painful?
Raw or honeyed?
I’m just not sure.
There is both bitter and sweet
right below my surface,
floating inside my mind,
waiting to be wrangled,
to be captured by my waiting pen.
My hand will clench it,
in customary fashion,
to mark them into being.
Pure white paper
will be scarred to receive them.
What will I choose to leave behind me today
for others to find?
Like the trails of the fallen,
the broken,
the explorers,
the saints.
Will I choose words of wisdom
simple sweet,
or words of sharpened justice
like the stinging of the bee?
AL 8/13/13
For my beautiful soul friend, Anni Macht Gibson, on her first full day of freedom. I love you, my dear Anamcara!
The Music of Language
Words Are Energy
by Madisyn Taylor
Each word we speak has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves into the expanse of the universe.
When we speak or write, we use the vehicles of words to carry meaning, as well as energy, from ourselves to another person or group of people. We may be speaking to our baby, our boss, or to an audience of 500 people. We may be writing a love letter, a work-related memo, or an entry in our own diary. Whatever the case, each word we speak or write has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves in the same way that a note of music creates waves. And like musical notes, our words live in communities of other words and change in relation to the words that surround them. When we are conscious of the energy behind our words, we become capable of making beautiful music in the world. If we are unconscious of the power of words, we run the risk of creating a noisy disturbance.
Some of us know this instinctively, while others come to this understanding slowly. Most of us, though, speak without thinking at least some of the time, blurting out our feelings and thoughts without much regard for the words we choose to express them. When we remind ourselves that our words have an impact on the world at the level of energy, we may find within ourselves the desire to be more aware of our use of language.
A fun way to increase our sensitivity to the power of words is to simply make a list of our favorite words and notice the energy they contain. We can write them down and post them where we can see them, or we can speak them aloud, feeling them reverberate in our bodies and in the air around us. This is like learning to consciously play an instrument that we have been playing unconsciously for most of our lives, and the effect can be startling and delightful. As we grow more comfortable and confident playing the instrument of language, we will begin to compose beautiful messages, creating positive energy every time we write or speak.
DailyOM
http://www.dailyom.com
A good humored Christian who accepts others as they are, not as they should be, is an evangelist.
– Brennan Manning
Lord, help me in what You have called me to do…
Passover
~ Lynn Ungar
Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .
and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
-Exodus 12: 7; 13
They thought they were safe
that spring night; when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.
But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.
Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.
That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
“The Opening of Eyes” by David Whyte, from Songs for Coming Home. © Many Rivers Press, 1984.
I googled it
what was the history?
the meaning?
my ability to write,
along with me,
had just been put into this container – a paper bag
that I couldn’t write my way out of???
It felt like a throw down challenge.
how difficult is this challenge?
and, by golly,
how did I get into the this giant paper bag?
armed only with pen,
quite obviously
a silly decision.
Why didn’t I think to bring scissors?
or
chocolate?
If I had chocolate
I wouldn’t really mind being in this paper bag
I should have seen this coming
been prepared…
just in case I can’t figure out
how to write myself out.
Of course,
I didn’t really intend to get stuck here
in a paper bag –
it just somehow happened.
I got caught in a cross-fire
of two people
with razor-sharp writing skills.
(are they better than mine –
or do we all just have our own voice?
hmmmm)
maybe I’ll just stay in this bag
and take a nap.
it’s pretty comfy here.
Oh nice, I have an orange in my pocket.
I can write myself out later
I’ve never found myself in a paper bag before –
think I’ll just enjoy the novelty of the adventure
before I go home for dinner.
AL 1/6/13
Words
by Dana Gioia
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.
Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
life: acoustic & amplified 