Month: September 2023

What’s After?

She advances ever close to her last breath,
and asks, “What is after?”
“After this belly rises as I breathe,
the touch of grandbabies soft skin,
the kiss placed on these lips by my love,
after the thoughts that drift through this mind,
the fear in not knowing,
the joy in seeing my beloved’s face.”
Then, she hears from within,
Look to what was before.
“Before this body descended
from my mother’s warmth,
wailed as I took my first breath,
before this body formed
from a seed fertilized to grow,
before I was a thought or a desire,
before the stars formed?”
You were a part of everything, and nothing.
A drop in the ocean of love,
the scent of a flower wafting on a breeze,
all that is after that which was before.
“Now I see,” she whispers. 
“I will return from what I have learned,
from this body, from form, from life, in love.
I return to the ocean of love.”

(image from Hubble Telescope)

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” 

J.R.R. Tolklen

“That’s what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays.”

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet In Heaven

“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.” 

David Searls

Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind

Click

The Sentinel

 
We sit at the water’s edge as
he arrives to march back and forth,
like a sentinel sent to guard his domain,
gray and white feathers proud 
he pauses to rest on one leg, 
tucks the other beneath, 
affects indifference as he
keeps a close eye on all around—
waiting. 
In a flash he is between our feet
to grab a crumb that falls. 

As we sit, intent on 
absorbing the peace and beauty 
of the setting sun, the pungent smell
of water at the shore where drift
brings in sticks and vegetation,
and rest at the end of our day,
seagull offers us a visual—
life lived in reaction, 
to guard, to wait, to snatch, 
when the moment is ripe for the taking.

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

Charles R. Swindoll

“How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer

“You can’t change how people act, but what you can change is how you react.”

Bonnie Hammer

Ongoing Reading List: Reading for Heart and Mind

click

The Unseen Force

I thought of the ways we rejoice in life,
offer gratitude to the unseen force,
weary then from trial and toil,
seek solace to soothe our soul.

One thought riding the other,
one emotion responding to need,
making our way to a final day
when breath retires
and we release to what comes beyond—
something or nothing.
We call it faith or delusion,
each in their own way.

Then, I watched the sun set,
sparkling on the waters deep,
hearing a child’s laughter 
as she ran through the evening waves.
Whatever you are, I mused, 
this is what you are.
This is how you speak.

“Thus, to know humanity, understand the earth. To know the earth, understand heaven. To know heaven, understand the Way. To know the Way, understand the great within yourself.”

25th Verse of the Tao Te Ching

“My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.”

Cai Guo-Qiang

“To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality; to infuse life with color, motion and strange scents that intoxicate; to leap beyond imagination into that space between the worlds where fantasy becomes real; to be at once animal and god. Magic is…the ultimate adventure.”

Starhawk

For Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind

Click

To Possess or Let Flow

The line on a Facebook post went something like this:

“If we would all possess the same truth, we could get along.”

I thought, possess and truth do not belong in the same sentence.

This must be an error!

Does this person want to build a dam for a flowing river?

Stop the wind from blowing?

I rewrote the sentence:

If we go deep within, we find a truth that flows throughout all life.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke

“The river is everywhere.” 

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Humans, chuckled the vampire, so possessive.” 

Gail Carriger, Soulless

For Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind

Click