In my kayak
I float on water
under the sun
tickled by a breeze.
Clouds drift,
rain drops splash,
while loon teaches
her young
to dive to life
under the surface.
Like loon, I descend
to what lies beneath
sensory perception,
in search of sustenance
for my journey.
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
Eckhart Tolle
“Hold this rope while I dive into my soul; don’t even bother pulling it if I didn’t come up on my own.”
Ahmed Mostafa
“I will dive into my chaos, and my Abyss will turn it into an art scene.”
When my baby lay dying,
we called all to our home to meet her,
to hold her, to kiss her goodbye.
When everyone departed, we lay on our bed
with baby at rest, spooned between,
and I slept.
While I was sleeping, she took her last breath,
swaddled in a yellow rose blanket,
smelling of powder and lotion.
When my father lay dying,
We were called to his side.
We sat, stood around the bed,
told stories, laughed, wiped tears,
and sighed. After a night and a day
I walked out to rest.
While I slept,
he took his last breath. Then we sat
and waited and remembered as
his spirit fully left.
When my mother lay dying,
we called all to her home, as we
sat, cooked, ate, and talked, laughed,
and cried, for five days and nights.
At dusk she lay quiet.
Leaving my brother to sit vigil,
I slept.
She took her last breath.
Seconds later, I was at her side.
We washed her body and adorned
her with rose petals and oil.
When my sister lay dying,
I slept in my bed,
then awakened from a phone call
to rush to her side after she drew
her last breath. I sat with tears,
spoke to her spirit as memories of
her sweetness and her challenges
washed over me— the joy, the delight,
the losses that formed her life.
Now, I wonder,
will I wake before I die?
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.”
Marcus Aurelius
“If you are living every experience fully, then death doesn’t take anything from you. There’s nothing to take because you’re already fulfilled. That’s why the wise being is always ready to die.”
Seneca
“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ and find that there is no death.”
Eckhart Tolle
For Ongoing resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind
That house I used to live in,
the one that eluded me
as things do when you try to forget,
or simply don’t remember,
felt lacking, uncertain,
incomplete, like—
What’s in that closet?
Such a jumble,
I could not tell you.
I did not seem to be
a part of it, nor it to me,
yet it’s where life happened:
birth and death, joy, and sadness,
memories made for a lifetime,
the joy of children and delight.
Today, in this house, I breathe,
feel comfort and recognize each corner—
each room in accord.
This house I now live in feels whole,
part of a creation, mine, and
not mine. Like the earth places
where I feel I belong, as I
merely travel through.
“On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.”
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance
“We all have a sacred calling that has very little to do with what we accomplish in this world. It is the calling of the sacred — the quiet pull of an implicit wholeness within each of us that awaits our conscious recognition.”
John J. Prendergast, The Deep Heart, Our Portal to Presence
“By psychological work we are changed. In spiritual work we are revealed: we manifest our inner wholeness in conscious daily life.”
David Richo, How to be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration
ForOngoingResoure List: Reading for Heart and Mind
While Sunday is my poem or prose offering, going forward, an occassional Wednesday will be my day to address art.
Today I offer a THANK YOU! to the collector who will be giving “Dancing Under One Sun” a new home when the show ends on August 31. She missed the opening so we met up to enjoy the exhibition one Friday afternoon and this painting called to her. 18 x 24 Mixed Media
There is still time to see and enjoy my art and poems.
Monday through Friday 9-3. The show closes August 31. Call the Carondelet office for any evening times available.
Dark clouds hover,
breezes shift,
sun’s rays ease
while rabbit skitters
to protection.
In the unexpected,
tensions rise,
plans change,
we scurry when
we thought we
could rest, thinking
this day
would last
forever.
The announcement comes,
our brains slow,
numb in thought:
to do, to think,
to plan, to support,
to be present, as
a loved one navigates,
through rocky terrain.
A child’s laughter
wakes us into now,
not when or if, but
the present, filled
with love and compassion,
and we realize
the sun never went anywhere,
was merely hidden
behind a dark cloud that, true
to its nature, drifts.
Losses felt,
not in a moment but
in the movement of time,
and change, and then
through the laughter of children,
we move, we live, we love.
“What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.”
HENRI NOWEN
“It is a serious thing to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”
Mary Oliver
“Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”
The news reads of
cluster bombs
and record heat
of all time
and I attend
a party for a
Ukrainian family
who are now here
safe from war
over there, while
I got stuck on
cluster bombs
with my heart
clenched like a
fist pumping
“Enough! Enough!
Enough!”
Then night brings
a dream
with me standing
in a field with
one friend on
my left
the other
up ahead on
my right and
the question,
What is most important now?
One friend says
this and that
and the other
and the one up
ahead says,
“Kindness.”
I look from
one to the other
not wanting to
offend in choosing
but I know and raise
my arms and yell
“KINDNESS”, and
with a thumbs up I
run through the
golden grass in
the hot sun
to a lone tree
and lay my body down
with my back
on the moist
cool soil
bringing me to
breath and to
peace as the
shade brings
balance of
kindness to
this hot and
wild earth.
“One who lives in accordance with nature does not go against the way of things. He moves in harmony with the present moment, always knowing the truth of just what to do.”
8th Verse of the Tao Te Ching, trans. by Dr. Wayne Dyer
“We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.”
Francis J. Braceland
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
After my mother’s death,
days after the veil between
worlds once again closed,
leaving me to the details
of a life stopped in motion,
I enter her home,
see the desk with her pen
lying on the green blotter,
next to a stack of unpaid bills
ready for her signature.
I look toward the kitchen
as she left it, a jumble of paper recipes,
notes she made for groceries, reminders,
all waiting for her return—her hand, in the
making of caramel rolls or an apple pie.
I walk down the hall
past the family photos, the ancestors
long buried in clay soil
back on the 40 acre “Heartbreak Farm”
as it was later called.
I enter her bedroom,
see the rose colored walls,
move into her private bathroom,
open a drawer, and that is when
a tear drops, and with an
intake of breath
and release, the tears flow.
I hold her toothbrush, then touch
the earrings resting on the stone counter—
the intimate details of a life.
I smell her in this space, not
a flowery presence, more of powder—
a scent of living, cleansing, of hope, and
one I want to cling to like the scent on the
yellow blanket that became a shroud, when
I held my week-old daughter,
and carried her back to the hospital
as she died in my arms.
A scent I then wanted to embrace,
until the day I
set it down and believed in
my one next step of living.
(Image from artist collection)
“Love is in the sensual details.”
Lebo Grand
“In a relationship the details are everything because they remind you – just when you need to be reminded the most – why you fell in love with someone in the first place.”
The morning is filled with bird song
as I sit in my prayer space
unburdening myself on paper,
reading to fill myself with spiritual text
then, emptying in meditation
as the symphony filters into my senses.
A gentle backdrop in the cool morning air
with flutters of breeze moving the leaves here and there.
Now, stillness — what I seek within as the mind chatters.
Sounds drift on clouds; I let them pass
until a cocophony of thoughts fills my mind, again.
“Mind can hear a song sung by heart when no sound is heard by the ears.”
Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“The sound of silence is many times louder than the sound of words.”
Mzee Byron Moseni Kabamba
“Shut up, she tells her monkey mind. Please shut up, you picker of nits, presser of bruises, counter of losses, fearer of failures, collector of grievances future and past.”
Leni Zumas, Red Clock
The Gene Keys: Emracing Your Higher Purpose by Riuchard Rudd
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Inform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Energy Speaks: Messages from Spirit on Living, Loving, and Awakening by Lee Harris
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create an New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme
The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz
Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Mirabai Starr
The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz
Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang
How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödron
The Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Eknath Easwaran
St Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation by Mirabai Starr
Wild Wisdom Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Earth Prayers From Around The World, Ed by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
Unconditional Love and Forgiveness by Edith R. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M. Marshall III
Art & Fear by David Bayless & Ted Orland
Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon
The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Persons Path Through Depression by Eric Maisel, PhD
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living by Janis Amatuzio
Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
Violence & Compassion by His Holiness the Dahlai Lama
Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
Devotions by Mary Oliver
To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison
The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Soul an Archaeology Edited by Phil Cousineau
A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson
I Sit Listening to the Wind by Judith Duerk
Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood
The Soul of Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
Keep Going by Joseph M. Marshall III
Arriving at your own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
The Hidden Secrets of Water by Paolo Consigli
Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown
Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine
Joy in Loving, Mother Theresa
The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Let Your LIfe Speak by Parker Palmer
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran
Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson
The One World series of paintings and written reflections in poetry and prose depict the inner images of the artist from early 2020 through 2022 — the start of the pandemic through the George Floyd murder, civil unrest, political upheaval, and the war in Ukraine.
All art works are for sale as well as greeting cards made from the images. Please contact me for more information on purchase.
The gallery is open most M-F from 9-3 but call Wisdom Ways for further times during evenings and weekends. 651-696-2794
In summer,
I rest under the sun,
enticed by the open road.
I look at the calendar before me and see empty space. There is nothing written, noted, scheduled. One week. Something I have not seen for over three months. I feel tired in body, relief for the space ahead, joy in all that has been worked towards in these past weeks, months. It is an open road, if only a short one, but I will take it. Space to be, to reflect, to rest, inviting curiosity for what will unfold.
“Map out your future, but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.”
Jon Bon Jovi
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
Douglas Adams
“The road is there. It will always be there. You just have to decide when to take it.”
Chris Humphrey
Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind
The Gene Keys: Emracing Your Higher Purpose by Riuchard Rudd
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Inform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Energy Speaks: Messages from Spirit on Living, Loving, and Awakening by Lee Harris
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create an New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme
The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz
Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Mirabai Starr
The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz
Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang
How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödron
The Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Eknath Easwaran
St Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation by Mirabai Starr
Wild Wisdom Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Earth Prayers From Around The World, Ed by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
Unconditional Love and Forgiveness by Edith R. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M. Marshall III
Art & Fear by David Bayless & Ted Orland
Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon
The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Persons Path Through Depression by Eric Maisel, PhD
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living by Janis Amatuzio
Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
Violence & Compassion by His Holiness the Dahlai Lama
Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
Devotions by Mary Oliver
To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison
The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Soul an Archaeology Edited by Phil Cousineau
A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson
I Sit Listening to the Wind by Judith Duerk
Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood
The Soul of Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
Keep Going by Joseph M. Marshall III
Arriving at your own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
The Hidden Secrets of Water by Paolo Consigli
Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown
Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine
Joy in Loving, Mother Theresa
The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Let Your LIfe Speak by Parker Palmer
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran
Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson
What Resonates with you? Join in mindful dialogue.