Mindfulness, compassion and insight poetry.
If you put your hands on this oar with me, they will never harm another, and they will come to find they hold everything you want. If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer lift anything to your mouth that might wound your precious land – that sacred earth…
Sing, my tongue; sing, my hand; sing, my feet; my knee, my loins, my whole body. Indeed I am His choir. by St. Thomas Aquinas When I rest in body awareness, I allow the field of experience which is my body to speak to me. I hold the intention to listen with gentleness. This…
Forget about ‘transcending’ the body. Love it instead! Let go of the idea of ‘letting go’. Instead, let love go deep into the tender places, the parts that ache. Breathe into your sadness. Let your fear move deep within. Bow to your uncertainty. There is an untouchable place in you that fearlessly allows itself to…
Just sit there right now Don’t do a thing. Just rest. For your separation from God is the hardest work in this world. Let me bring you trays of food and something that you like to drink. You can use my soft words as a cushion for your head. By Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky…
Hope is the belief that one hand reaching to another can eventually touch the moon, allowing the light to guide us through the night. by Nicholas Mazza In this week before COP26 starts, I found myself reflecting on hope, where to find it when it feels illusive, and on the role it plays in…
Balance is noticed most when almost failed of — in an elephant’s delicate wavering on her circus stool, for instance, or that moment when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back. There are, too, its mysterious departures. Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked, a metal bowl clangs to the floor, the weight…
And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun. It sees and knows everything. It hears the gnashing even…
just to fall back on the grass and be just to fall down on my bed and stay to be just a being on this earth my head objects: there’s a life to be lived a path to be followed a skill to be learned a friend to be seen a change to be made…
The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. The idea you carry close to…