What if there were a prayer like an incantation, one to be recited, or sung—if you could carry a tune— echoing around the world like the wood pigeon’s call, five notes radiating as light rays fill the sky announcing: “Morning has arrived”.
What if, I ask, because I wonder what might bloom in our hearts if we held five words to lift us into the dawn— could they luminate our path through starless nights of change, surprise, and dread where daily news suspends us in silent, trembling pause?
Focus. Sing out. A clear message.
One that says: Lift your hearts today. Let love be your guide. My joy illuminates.
Could we, in unison, each in our own language of hope, sing until certainty rises that dawn has arrived, and all are bathed in new light.
Could we sing together and dispel the darkness that seeps through shadowed corners, permeating rooms of despair? Could we try?
There lies hope: Our one honest prayer of life. Together we could light the universe.
I lift my gaze to the sun, the moon, the stars, to the birds of the air, to the universe of mystery, to the everything and the nothing.
I lower my gaze to the earth, to the plants, the animals, to the crawling things, to all that grounds me into Gaia—
the bosom of the mother who nourishes, protects, challenges, and grieves, who is alive in her evolution, who pulses life.
I open my heart to those before me, to the whispers of love and compassion, to the cries of war and hate, and on to my shadow of fear, pain, and sorrow.
I look to the mountains, the seas, the vast life before me—the unknown. For it all, my heart says, yes, in gratitude for life, for the journey,
the opportunity to be in body, in human form, walking each day with those who seek, who carry light, who reach to touch the stars to earth— an angel's kiss. I bow in gratitude.
(Image my own)
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.”
-Henry Van Dyke
“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.”
Once I thought prayer was magic:
If I pray hard enough
God will give me what I desire. I was young and did not yet know
grief and despair.
I grew in knowledge of sorrow and joy,
and found no being who could
change the course of the many things
that bring us suffering, as was told, when
once I thought prayer was magic.
Nor did outward prayer give me
what I yearned for, which may
conflict with another’s longing.
Who does this being listen to?
If I pray hard enough,
I am told, if I am good enough,
follow the rules, listen to authority,
learn to be pure like the saints,
deny myself,
God will give me what I desire.
Then I learned to go within:
to know prayer as silence,
to focus, allow, listen, sit in peace,
open to universal wisdom. Not taught to me when
I was young and did not yet know:
the connection is within the seed of the divine inside of me.
All consciousness, open to love, forgiveness, and grace
changes me; I then join with others as
we open to joy, and ease that which is our
grief and despair.
(Thanks to WP friend, David, for his teaching of a ‘cascading’ poem.
“It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”
St. John Vianney
“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”
Today you wear a garment of white,
your jewels shimmer in the morning light.
Tomorrow you might show your wild
fierce nature, but today you offer peace.
The surrounding stillness invites me
to journey inward, sing the song of my heart,
rest in the cave of this winter day, release
expectations, even for the flutter of a moment.
You take life, yet who can deny your beauty
even as you cut a swath across the land, dance
a whirling dervish and lay waste to all before you.
You bring joy when you stand tall in your resilience
and draw our eyes to your oranges, greens, and reds.
Now, the birch bends, leaning toward prostration,
touching the ground in darshan with a prayer of supplication,
Help me support this heavy burden.
Prestige, finances, position, or heritage are irrelevant to you.
Your beauty and destruction are one. There is no separation.
It is in your nature to quench our thirst then suck us dry,
to gift us with your beauty then turn our heads in fear,
to be a compassionate mother, then devour your children.
We do our best to be aware, to take precaution, to bless you
in each day, and at times bow to the futility.
Mother, we are in your hands.
(Bending Birches Photo, December 15, 2022 )
“I think Nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never gonna let us relax!”
Richard Phillip Feynman
“My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.”
Michelangelo
“Many call this process ‘the destruction of nature.’ But it’s not really destruction, it’s change. Nature cannot be destroyed.”
Yuval Noah Harari
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
