night rounds

{Dear Lord, i've awoken on this cold, windy night with a very present memory of  how hard it  can  be to stay warm on a night like this. Please, Abba, be with your children who are sleeping outside tonight. who have nowhere else,  but the street to call home. especially, G-d the families with children. wherever they are. in all those just out of sight places, or in their cars, may this prayer fall like a blanket and comfort all about them, may it warm them, miraculously, and give them peace}

everything, everything.

{everything, everything.
is here to help you}

{Blessed Solstice}

{Midwinter Prayer}

God of all creation
of bare forest and low northern skies
of paths unknown and never to be taken
of bramble, sparrow and damp, dark earth


We thank you for loss, for the breaking of the dimming year
We thank you for light, even in its seeming midwinter failing
We thank you for life, for its hope and resistance
like a seed dying and living


{Amen}

- Rachel Mann
the Iona Community


[art by Sulamith Wulfing]

[after the unraveling]

i am pouring myself into
weaving a beautiful new

{love, bless your coming.
love, bless your going.
and the sky. will kiss
each step.
heart, believe.
you will be whole. and
i will see that bright day, and
smile.}

rrx-x

it's the tick tick tick thrush thrush
i want to remember
like the familiar wash of blood
gurgling in my inner-ear

a heartbeat cadent drum the midnight train
like the time the whole world spun by
dizzy from the the half-moon of your
Smile

and the way was
Sure
like the mathematically precise lines moving side-by-side
forever forward in the dark

matins.

Thank You,
{Great Ineffable}
For each breath
For the dawn
For the pinprick stars of Light
in the heaven of night that show me
We all have our place in the Dance
Thank You,
For today
For Each Moment
In this body
Every cell
Every unseen place
Is thoroughly known to You
I do not Fear
There is not a physician
Who can begin to comprehend
All You have made
And You have made me
And in me
You. Live.
{Live}
And move
And have Your being
And all that i am
All that i see
All that exists
Is in You
Therefore, i awake
{Awake}
And greet the sun
Mindful that
As i walk about today
All That Is,
Is in You

There is Your Great Mystery
Knit together with my bones
Pump my heart
Breathe my lungs
Sing my body
To praise You

everything, everything ...

this image is "the joy ballad" by amazing digital artist archan nair. his gorgeous work can be found: here


everything, everything ...
you wanted to be when you grew up.
{you still can}

i awaken with a heart wide-open.
i greet each moment of this day with an
incontrovertible 'yes!'

le bon mot du jour: courage

"Courage, you have to have courage to love somebody.
Because you risk everything, everything."

- Maya Angelou

because the shadow needs a light

things are ...
so often not what they seem

many times, this is sad
but just as often ...
a beautiful thing.

how the soul rises above

and so it happens some days when jolted out of a lunchtime reverie [mmmm, shitake and tofu] by the shrieking pain inflicted in that unmistakable burning of an ant bite that the heart can supercede the autonomic tyranny of the cerebellum and amygdala duo and pause to remember how big even the smallest life is

and so still in the grip of those tiny little mandibles allowing the work of her venomous piperidine injector i paused to breathe

[taking in the pain]

and
leaned down
to take a look

as my mind had reasoned there she was conforming to her nature setting little fires all about my ankle


pause


i

gently

placed the
tip
of my finger
distracting her
i guess perhaps
a new threat
but
climb aboard she
did

and

even more gently still
i

placed her on the bench next
to me

and i sat there watching
for awhile it seemed
she was shaky
confused
discombobulated
and
i thought
what is she thinking
is she lost
getting her bearings
how large her world
how random and capriciously
it changes for her

her circumstances
feasting at lunch
[as was i]
now
has brought her
to this new place
where
there is
something grander than the moment
something new to learn

i realized it was quite possible the noontime hot stone bench was harmful to her in some way and again i

gently
lifted her
leaned and delivered her
to the shady comfort of the ground

still shaky
she was
i
tried to imagine
her life

her needs
her physical demands

i

gently
placed

before her a
lake!

those last few drops of water from
my
own
cup

and watching
her
drink

with such joy i
smiled

never, please never.

underestimate

kindness.
the miraculous, transformative power of being present.
putting another first.
smiling.
tenderness.
taking time to breathe. deeply. before speaking.
choosing love over fear.
stepping into someone else's shoes. even for a moment.
remaining open.
putting your actions in-line with your words.
wanting someone else to be fully, wholly authentic and true to her own journey.
faithfully remaining, fully, wholly authentic and true to your own.

where there is real, true love between two individuals,
these are not hard.
not mutually exclusive.

instead.
it's a pause at the edge of the cliff.
taking the time to hold your other's hand
to stand firm, strong,
to lean into one another.
together.

knowing the thoughtless, single mis-step
hazards a heady plunge;
dizzying fall
from the precipice
onto the unforgiving stones
of self

it's true.

The world is far more vast than we often realize we can create.
And then,
we awaken.

xix

[becoming, i]

from The Walls Do Not Fall


There is a spell, for instance,
in every sea-shell:

continuous, the sea-thrust
is powerless against coral,

bone, stone, marble
hewn from within by that craftsman,

the shell-fish:
oyster, clam, mollusc

is master-mason planning
the stone marvel:

yet that flabby, amorphous hermit
within, like the planet

senses the finite,
it limits its orbit

of being, its house,
temple, fane, shrine:

it unlocks the portals
at stated intervals:

prompted by hunger,
it opens to the tide-flow:

but infinity? no,
of nothing-too-much:

I sense my own limit,
my shell jaws snap shut

at invasion of the limitless,
ocean-weight; infinite water

can not crack me, egg in egg-shell;
closed in, complete, immortal

full-circle, I know the pull
of the tide, the lull

as well as the moon;
the octopus-darkness

is powerless against
her cold immortality;

so I in my own way know
that the whale

can not digest me:
be firm in your own small, static, limited

orbit and the shark-jaws
of outer circumstance

will spit you forth:
be indigestible, hard, ungiving.

so that, living within,
you beget, self-out-of-self,

selfless,
that pearl-of-great-price.


H.D.

pause.

lying here noting the fading smell of sulfur match lit the Holy Spirit candle placed at the center of the cardinal directions on the altar I erected facing east signifying Life my life a whole life is the work being wrought in me i am tapping tapping tapping out each letter painstakingly but a moment this and then gone i love this lampost to living altarspace a low lying table i culled forth for this purpose to pause to bend knee to invoke i know we don't always know where we are headed cosmic vagabonds all but the Sacred knows exactly what we need and what we need is what I pray for our souls to grow i listen so often to the song when the birds are flying low watch the thunderheads form and did you know? you can lean so far into the wind and smell the rain gather whispering drops before there is even a visible cloud in the sky i thought i was imagining it one afternoon but it was as real as any dream and so it is i like knowing there is a secret wisdom wonder gathers all about us and we are so busy looking for what we think we should see we miss it the mystery the real and glory of it all i've come to the conclusion i want to listen more prayer is so much more about my ears than my voice but then my heart has always made its pace through the day with you I'm thinking of how now it's so much summer outside and yet like on Saturday when i felt it when you are out riding with the wind sometimes you can feel a change coming long before you'll see that change along its way i swear i felt tiny moments of fall and though all about us seems contrary to that day you can't tell me it's not coming i hear it's cold in the Panhandle tonight and so it is you envelop me in Mystery i cannot possibly know in this moment what the world it has instore for me but i know you mark my journey and i embrace it to honour you grant me courage like the ready staff i once took with me everywhere the one I called my umbrella only a few knew i never meant it to keep out the rain like the power imbued in the child's sword plucked and preserved from the gutter of oblivion i promise i will never stop looking for your letters never stop listening for your voice never stop never stop being in your name do not let me settle for less than your eternal transformational quickening moment by moment by moment. yes.


[artwork from the album "fallen splendour" by jeff johnson]

and that's it. we...no one...knows. take your chance.

After Fever


Under his bush,
invisibly, the grouse
folds his wings, won't flush;

in a week, hoppers
have taken over the grass,
as if they'd waited for

my eyes to turn away.
My step, tentative, still
springs them into flight,

crazy, sideways, light
bodies flung toward
they can't know what

fortune of leaf or flower,
water or pavement's disaster.
They take their chance

as I do, too soon
climbing blue spectacle,
a perfect breeze, out

of body's consumption. How
invisible well-being, worn
like lightest cloth

the wind moves, sheer
exhiliration, over
skin, the world alight

as I come back to it—
how pain is felt
as presence, not the slipping

away from one's own—
the terrible body's weight,
its knowledge, burning out.


Katharine Coles

i will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

- Dawna Markova

to breathe my deep

I am thinking of how,
when Jane was sick -
for a long time, I would kiss her and taste
the subtle shift and changes in her body chemistry.

For months, I begged her to go to the doctor.
She had no symptoms of her cancer, but
I could smell it
on her breath.

It was metallic.
Cold.
Like the thing growing death
inside of her.

I knew.

"Perhaps your fillings are leaching
into your bloodstream?" I said.
For months, I begged her to find out
if something was wrong.

When she finally presented with pain,
it was nearly 6 months later.

The doctor didn't think it was anything...
...but did the requisite bloodwork and culture
all the same.

They caught it,
on the outer edge of phase 1. And.
She's alive to this day.

---------------

I wish.

Someone was there
to hold me in the dark.
Like I held her
then.

To hold me so close, she
inhales my breathing as I sleep.
And whispers a silent prayer,
that I may be healed.


- jen busch

{i think i am waking up now}

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

- Rumi

through it all...

...I am learning, the infinite, transformative wisdom of simply becoming
Yes.

i. can.

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)


A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.


- Denise Levertov

when we do.

Singing Image of Fire

A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different shapes:
All things change when we do.
The first word, "Ah," blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true.

- Kūkai [774-835]
translation by Jane Hirshfield

post. apocalypse.

i have read...
and immediately responded
to your letter.
call.
and.
response.
...and eeked out with passion
...in furtive splotches of clumsy ink.
black.
the thought carried
for so long, my heart
craters a constant
hole.
it aches.
it haunts.
a footfall,
remarkably like yours.

and after tears and tears and years and tears.
[i've cried so long, even tragedies seem quaint]
i fumbled the word out
on the page.
the word.
made flesh.
the flesh.
made alive between us.
[and neither
of us,
were ever the same.]

so. after
crying. and sitting
in silence.
like a catatonic wretch.
i let the words come.
come.
flood forth,
and they came.

and finally after days of carrying the tiny missile.
i rent asunder the lines
that connect
the far-flung
ties
that still bind.
even now.

and stitched together.
like suturing
a binding, piercing
my heart.
my hands.
my all.
for you.

check the box.
the mailman cometh.

and all God's children gots travelin' shoes.

so.
some day.
i'm gonna cash in my chips and give
away my books. i'm gonna
kiss the coming gravestones
for my tiniest kitters, and
yank the ball and chain
on my cloister's light bulb.
one.
last.
time.
that rusty door hinge
will sigh, goodbye
...and donning my tough soles, i
will wander my way
outta
town.

look for me
in the winter stars. and
in the wind-seduced trees. i
will be.
that sound of wings o'erhead. i
will be.
the remarkable and noted quiet. i
will be.
every child grinning back in the
grocery store wagon. i
will be.
the twilight and the morning light.
and when you wonder where i wander...
stop
a minute,
and say hello to a stranger.
a notty, aged, and weather-warn, street person.
take
a moment.
to.
see.
them.
be kind.
say hello then.
and i will smile.

how to disappear.

"i'm growing so quiet," she said.
SHOUT. Discourse. whisper.
[gone]

blessed mercy.

i'm so used to losing.
i live with open hands now.
oh, blessed mercy.

if you are happy.

Memories of Horses

The lines in the hands of old people
gradually curve over and will point soon toward earth.
They take with them their secret language,
cloud-words and wind-letters,
all the signs the heart gathers up in the lean year.

Sorrow bleaches out and turns to face the stars
but memories of horses, women's feet, children
flow from their old people's faces down to the grass kingdom.

In huge trees we can often see
images of the peace in the sides of animals,
and the wind sketches in the grass, if you are happy,
running children and horses.

- Rolf Jacobsen
translated by Robert Bly