by Brother Richard Hendrick

The conflict in the Middle East is on many of our minds and hearts. I find the poem above (by Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin monk from Ireland) to be a beautiful prayer for healing. Although it sounds idealistic, I think it expresses a dream that we must have. If we don’t have hope, we won’t have resilience, if we don’t have resilience we can’t act. So, to connect with the dream of healing, to be able to imagine peace, is necessary and important. Joanna Macy says that we must live the hope, and that to live from hope is what ignites possibility. David Adams, a psychologist in the US, did research that found that those who had an optimistic view of human nature, were more likely to be peace activists.

I know I’m speaking for many when I say I feel powerless to help, and for many more when I say I need to limit my exposure to the news. This poem feels like the balm to soothe my frustrated, aching heart. Reading it helps me to continue to look reality in the face. Holding what’s real in one hand and the dream in the other, I feel I can head onwards.

Ps. If you’d like to learn a new way to receive the gifts of poetry come along to our retreat day on Mindfulness Practice Days which is on the 18^th November – a day of mindfulness and poetry, inspired by the serenity prayer.

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.

Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.

by Dorothy Hunt

This poem by spiritual teacher Dorothy Hunt had me laugh out loud when one of my wonderful BAMBA colleagues read it out in the middle of a meeting where we were all a bit frazzled with the demands on us. Who says my life should unfold according to my plans, when clearly it’s not?! I know that, but that doesn’t mean I know it all the time… The quiet certainty in Dorothy’s voice brought me back from buying into those habitual beliefs that had taken over when it felt like there were too many things happening at once. Thank goodness for friends and poems that can call me out when I go into that rabbit hole!

I don’t need tigers to eat only vegetables, or my boss, my spouse or myself to be absent. And I will keep practising a radical welcome to all that is…

Photo by Juan Camilo Guarin P on Unsplash

He isn’t cold,
and he is thinking things over.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,
and he is a part of it.

He looks a bit like a mandarin,
or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

But he has hardly enough above the eyes
to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however,
which is what philosophers must have.

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves,
because he rests in the Atlantic.

Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.

And what does he do, I ask you?
He sits down in it!
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity
– which it is.
He has made himself a part of the boundless
by easing himself into just where it touches him.

I like the duck.
He doesn’t know much,
but if only I could listen
He teaches me all I need to know.

by Donald C. Babcock

A sweet poem with hidden depths is this one I think, written in 1947 by Donald C. Babcock, the professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire who was also a poet and a minister. He died in 1986 at the ripe old age of 100, and he brought a number of books and poetry collections into the world. The poem was sent to me as you see it here, but looking online I realised that the original has a slightly different ending, mentioning religion (which is of course fair enough as a minister, but I have a preference for this one! You can find the original here if you’re curious).

So, resting on the heaving waves, poised and present. Plenty of waves to practice with, and what a helpful image to remember how to meet them… like a little duck!

Photo by Goke Obasa on Unsplash

by Wendell Berry

I’m surprising myself with landing on this poem as the final one for 2020. Like many people, it’s felt like a hard year in different ways for me, and it’s pretty clear that collectively, we’re not out of the woods yet (which strikes me as an expression that is pretty passé, surely these days the fact that most of us are far removed from woods is a sign of ‘still having difficulties or still being in danger’.)

I can’t promise I’ll feel like ‘what we need is here’ in all circumstances, and on so many levels there’s a looong list of things that are not yet here (like justice and fairness, to name but two), and as Barack Obama said back in 2009 when he first became president: “everywhere we look, there is work to be done.” But are these words from the prolific farmer, poet and activist Wendell Berry not also true? In between the chaos and scrambling of day to day living, there is that ‘ancient faith’ like a deep note in the chord, steadily present when I attune to it. And it comes with much gratitude… so if I have any intention for the new year, it includes this: to remember that what we need is here. May it be so!

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash

by Mary Oliver

This poem moves me with the deep sense of peace that it exudes to me – no need to know any more than you do, taking what is given, seeing what is plain, and the complete belonging that speaks from the last sentence. It reminded me of how important that sense of belonging is: ‘the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field’. What would it be to go through life like that? During recent blissful days of roaming our nearest nature space with my son Finbar (which is a truly gorgeous place with a rocky hill for clambering on, a little river for building dams, some gorgeous old trees and big field for having adventures in) it’s felt a bit like that, this sweet uncomplicated but rich sense of things being exactly right in that moment.

There is a Dutch poem* which I have loved since I was a teenager and a sentence of that often comes back to me on a day with Finbar. It roughly translates to something like ‘Happy I was, on that day, / no bad news from newspaper or city / could make me forget about that’. And that sentiment might be mostly true for me in the moment of adventuring with Finbar. But the latest events of police brutality and systemic oppression that Fay wrote about as well, highlight so starkly how the experience of the world as a welcoming safe place with the ‘suitable’ conditions for flourishing, is a privilege that is not the daily reality for many (as James Baldwin spoke about so powerfully, long before I was even born).

All the more precious to be reminded every day by the birds and the fields of the possibility of that natural state of being… and let’s work together to ensure that becomes true for all of us.

Wandeling naar Parfondeval
– Remco Campert

De wind wuift over mijn gezicht
schaduw van wat blad.

Het pad gaat hoger straks
de heuvel op, daarachter schuilt gevaar

of veiligheid? In elk geval
vervolg van weg, een bocht

en dan de trage afloop naar het dal
waar water smiespelt

om het badend gras. Gelukkig
was ik op die dag, geen kwaad

bericht in krant uit stad
kon maken dat ik dit vergat.

Photo by Vadim B from Pexels