Walk Slowly

It only takes a reminder to breathe,

a moment to be still, and just like that,

something in me settles, softens, makes

space for imperfection. The harsh voice

of judgment drops to a whisper and I

remember again that life isn’t a relay

race; that we will all cross the finish

line; that waking up to life is what we

were born for. As many times as I

forget, catch myself charging forward

without even knowing where I’m going,

that many times I can make the choice

to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk

slowly into the mystery.

 ~ Danna Faulds ~

Love After Love

when, with elation, 

at your own door, 

in your own mirror, 

and each will smile at the other’s welcome and say, sit here. Eat. 

You will love again the stranger who was your self. 

to itself, 

all your life, 

for another, who knows you by heart. 

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes, 

peel your own image from the mirror. 

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

UNTIL ONE IS COMMITTED

By Goethe

Until one is committed,

there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,

always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)

there is one elementary truth,

the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

that the moment one definitely commits oneself,

then Providence moves too.

All sort of things occur

to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor

all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,

which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius,

power and magic in it.

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

                    And nothing

happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...

  

--Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

By Juan Ramon Jimenez

The Summer Day

 

   - 1990 (Mary Oliver)

  Who made the world? 

  Who made the swan, and the black bear? 

  Who made the grasshopper? 

  This grasshopper, I mean-- 

  the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 

  the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 

  who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-- 

  who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 

  Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 

  Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 

  I don't know exactly what a prayer is. 

  I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

  into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 

  how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 

  which is what I have been doing all day. 

  Tell me, what else should I have done? 

  Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? 

  Tell me, what is it you plan to do 

  with your one wild and precious life? 

Kindness

By Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Copyright @ 1986 by Mary Oliver. First published in Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press. Reprinted in New and Selected Poems, Volume One, Beacon Press.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter 1

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost ... I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in ... it's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter 4

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter 5

I walk down another street.

~ Portia Nelson ~

“The purpose of Life, after all, is to live it.

To taste experience to the utmost.   To reach out eagerly and without 

Fear for newer and richer experience.”

~Eleanor Roosevelt

"Meditation accepts us just as we are-in both our tantrums and our bad habits, in our love and commitments and happiness. It allows us to have a more flexible identity because we learn to accept ourselves and all of our human experience with more tenderness and openness. We learn to accept the present moment with an open heart. Every moment is incredibly unique and fresh, and when we drop into the moment, as meditation allows us to do, we learn how to truly taste this tender and mysterious life that we share together."

(From Pema Chodren's book How To Meditate)

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

~Goethe

“You are a power, a force as strong and strange as any element of nature. Do not shrink.  Do not hide.  Be the thing you were meant to be.”

~Nayyirah Waheed

“Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no

crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.” bhante henepola gunaratana