by Mary Oliver

I love the message I receive from this poem. I think Mary Oliver is saying that our minds can get so caught up in the whys and wherefores that we forget to connect to the wonders of the world even when we’re surrounded by them.

‘I love this world, but not for its answers,’ she says.

She passionately reminds us to cherish the miracle of nature, here the wintery scene and the presence of the ‘barred or great horned ship of the air’ – the owl.

The gesture of holding out our hands is her beautiful way to describe a way of being. This way of being seems to be both an outer posture and an inner one. It’s a way of embodying our love for the natural world and really being there.

I’m endlessly aghast at how we human beings can be all caught up searching for answers in the maze of thought, getting more and more lost. In this way we generate the illusion that the answers are surely here somewhere, and even more so, that the answers are the ultimate destination. Don’t get me wrong, I love meaning-making and I know that thinking is a superpower. Both capacities are extraordinary in their own ways. But, like Mary Oliver, I believe that giving up on knowing it all needs to be in our repertoire too. And in fact, it’s often only when we stop the relentless thinking that meaning finally comes rushing in.

The strange truth is that when we are able to connect with the simplicity of pure being, the questions, and their answers, no longer seem important. What a funny conundrum! And we still keep rushing about in that maze.

From inside the maze, the prospect of simply being is rather unattractive, It doesn’t promise a dopamine hit for a start. The forward motion of our ‘Drive System’ as Professor Paul Gilbert, our patron calls it, is addictive. It takes resolve, discipline and devotion to get off the wheel.

So perhaps this poem can be inspiration in this wintery season, to cherish the natural wonders that are all around us. Whether we’re in the city or the countryside, whether it’s a dreary dark day, or a crisp sparkly one. The sky above the buildings, the birds wheeling through it, the wetness of rain, the closeness of mist, the magic of frost or snow, the deep green of the evergreens, the friendliness of a robin and yes, if you’re lucky, the hooting of an owl.

Ps. Would you like to start 2026 with an inner ‘posture’ of love and wonder at the life you have and the world you live in? Our Wonder of the Everyday course gives you guidance and friendly company for just that.

Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash

my insignificance thrills me
and the largest of my sadnesses
dwindle smaller than the space

between grains of sand
and in that moment,
knowing my place,

comes a love so enormous
I can love anyone, anyone,
even myself.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I love and completely recognise the experience Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer describes here – how the perspective between the greatness of nature and the smallness of me can be both healing and freeing.

But I think there is something to watch out for when making that shift away from my habitual focus on Me and My trouble to what Mary Oliver pointed to when she said ‘Meanwhile, the world goes on‘. There can be a sense of disconnecting or abandoning ourselves in that shift, a kind of detaching to make the difficult stuff more manageable. A very human impulse of course, and actually an attempt at compassion (alleviating suffering) in itself, but if there’s a disconnecting involved, it’s a move away from wholeness and healing and so it will at best be a temporary assuaging.

So instead, can there be a reconnecting with the truth of that greater perspective, that lovingly includes our own stuff? It’s not about denying of our humanness or ‘the largest of my sadnesses’, but seeing what else is true? And there’s a subtle but important difference in the two…

Of course it may not always be easy to access a ‘lake or a sea or a mountainside’ when you need one. Luckily, our imagination can be a powerful ally and we may access that greatness through the porthole of our memory. And the sky is a powerful greatness in itself, even if we can only see a small piece of it in between big buildings…

Let’s practice accessing that love so enormous that we can love anyone, even ourselves!

PS one of the contexts for practising a change of perspective and loving anyone, even ourselves, is in the standalone weekend of Compassionate Imagery For Resilience…

Photo by Khatam Tadayon on Unsplash

My love is a golden bird
in a crystal cage

and that cage is perched
on the head of a fat boa
coiled at the top of a tree

and that tree is surrounded
by scorpions
and tigers and bears.

So I went in search of the tree
and fought the beasts
around its trunk.

I fought the fat snake.
But when I opened the cage

I found a goldcrest
with its wings torn off.

by Pascale Petit

I often turn to poetry for comfort and guidance, but this poem by Cornwall based poet Pascale Petit, starkly gives us neither. Yet it is the one that stands out in my memory from the throng of poems I’ve read recently. And even though it’s heartbreaking I love it, because it awakens my heart, though granted painfully.

It’s an extraordinary description of human complexity and the endless quest to find love in the maelstrom. It seems we are all searching, first setting our sights on others and then perhaps on ourselves. We are all in some way fighting scorpions, tigers, bears and ‘the fat boa’ at the summit of it all, as we are tirelessly and dauntlessly driven forward by our formidable longing for ultimate love. We are so tragically honourable and troubled at the same time!

And then, to arrive at the crystal cage after all this and find a goldcrest with its wings torn off. Such brokenness and torment! In recent years I have faced the question – what if being human means facing an irredeemable fate? I think I always used to live in the assumption of – if we’re good enough, if we do the right thing, if, if, if… then life will treat us well. Now I’m not so sure. Life experience is toppling any reliance on this idea.
But, maybe if we turn more towards our own scorpions, tigers and bears, and towards that inner coiled boa, the struggle and acceptance this demands of us, might be the alchemy that means the goldcrest can sing. Even amidst the irredeemable fate we face, even with torn off wings? (I would love to hear other’s thoughts on this! It’s not something I’ve ever spoken about…)

And here’s the thing. As I write this, I realised that there is one essential element in the poem which was invisible to me until this moment. The tree! The tree is the holder of it all, the spreading ecosystem in which it all happens, and the supporter of the boa, the crystal cage and the goldcrest. I would like to be the tree, steady in the maelstrom, home of the goldcrest, unconquerable by beasts. And even if my goldcrest has no wings, I feel the existence of that crest of gold to be wondrous and I will sing, perhaps haltingly, in a broken voice, perhaps only sometimes, perhaps from being all twisted up, but I hope in my own true voice and from love.

See, I still want to end with salvation! It would be hard for me to finish a blog without it. Credit goes to Pascale Petit for having the courage to write a poem which ends this way. And the difference is, I think, that the true redemption is not in finding mother’s love, but is an inside job. And this is why mindfulness and compassion practice bring hope.

PS. If you’d like to go on a journey into the landscape of the human heart through poetry and mindfulness check out these two opportunities: 6 week course (May) or a 6 week course (September).

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

This poem was found in THIS ANTHOLOGY

And HERE IS THE POET’S WEBSITE

by Jeff Foster

One of the things I love about the poems by teacher and author Jeff Foster (this one amongst many gems in his book You Were Never Broken), is the radical acceptance that embraces all the unacceptable things within it. The feeling of my unloveableness being lovable, and there being nothing wrong with having the feeling that there’s something wrong with me.

It allows this stepping back into the wider space around the feelings, shifting to a different layer or perspective, and there’s much more of a  generous welcome there to whatever guest is currently visiting the guesthouse of my being. The final sentence really sums it up for me: stop trying to love yourself; simply be the Self that loves… here goes!

PS if you’d like to explore this practice of radical acceptance and self compassion, you will find elements of it in most of our trainings. Explicit self compassion is part of our Level 1 before becoming completely central in Level 2, and continues to weave into Levels 3 and 4. It’s a core ingredient in our approach to mindfulness, and in my experience, it makes all the difference!

Photo by Rachel Shillcock on Unsplash

in new languages, learning to stretch beyond
the center, beyond the lips, learning to be more moon
and less woman, to reflect light without owning it,

learning to lose whatever it has used before as a measure.
This is the way I want to love: in an idiom stronger
than tongues, I want to love in the way that tides pull

and release, like the moon which holds without touch,
I want to invite the sky to create a bigger space in me
a place spacious enough to hold all the wings

of the passing moment. I want to be buoyant enough
to carry all of love’s weight. “The sky,” I say.
“The sky is bigger, but the ocean is also wide.”

He is satisfied by my words, closes his eyes.
In my chest, a star falls. In my belly
strong tug of tides.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

A poignant poem on how to love, by the prolific Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She has been sharing her poem-a-day practice with the world since 2005, and now has beautiful, reflective poems on countless topics on her website.

In reading and mulling on it, I too feel that longing, that intention to love more deeply and fully with each passing day.  i was particularly struck by ‘I want to be buoyant enough to carry all of love’s weight’ – and feel acutely that while on some days it seems as light as a sunbeam, there are also days or times where that wish feels real and urgent.

Luckily, intentions are powerful, so may our love keep growing!

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash