February 13, 2024
Breathe. Let the light that is all around you enter through your crown chakra. Let it penetrate your Being. Feel The warmth of the fire within you. Know that you are loved. Align all the energies. Let them converge as one in the center of your Being. Breathe. Create space in time. All will come to pass in its own time. Don’t try to rush things. Breathe. Create room in time. Those creative possibilities are beautiful, all in their own time. Give yourself the gift of room in time. Let this knowing in your body and your heart lead the…
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January 30, 2024
The work of clearing the tangled recesses of your heart underneath the brambles and the thorns has revealed itself just In time. Accept it all, for it is exactly what you need. Wait patiently for the light to make its way through the dark. It will, you know. Embrace the obstacles; they will set you free! Accept them all as gifts, a vast surprise, make room for something new to come, and wise. If you want, you may go inside, untwist the brambles one by one, do the inner work that must be done. Let the moist leaves, the twigs,…
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January 16, 2024
Stop. Do not move. Let the swirling waves inside you still themselves. Stop. until you can hear your intuition moving you. Trust your intuition. Let it guide your way. It’s fine to let all the possibilities in to see the landscape that lies before you. While the world moves at its frantic pace, deep is what’s being asked for. Time to take the next step out in silence. Time to be alone. Time to go inside, to know thyself to let nature and your own voice find you and shape you into new forms, forms that grant you freedom.
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January 2, 2024
Tomorrow, we turn toward the light. Today, we go inside where night can find us. There, our secret troubles can heal us, can give us the gift of life. This darkness comforts me, holds me, nourishes me, wraps me in its cloak of peace. Deep rest. I let what is dying die, stay still until it’s time. Quietly anticipate the light and rebirth soon to come.
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November 28, 2023
Give yourself this gift to feed your Soul: Writing time where writing can lead to your own deep and hidden thoughts. Let them come to you unbidden and find you as your words take shape on page. Step aside your critic. Let your intuition speak from the silent corners of your heart, transporting you to somewhere new, somewhere you have never been before. Open a new door: You are hungry for your words. Allow yourself to be romanced by something larger than yourself. That’s what we’re all here for.
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October 31, 2023
The world recovers from its long illness haltingly, at best. The waves of shortages of starts and stops are like the shifting sands of a sand dune hill I attempted to climb Morocco earlier this year. The Saharan desert beckoned with its beauty. A lone person standing. on a dune, faced east, toward the afternoon light. We dismounted from our camels at the behest of our Berber guides who beckoned us to climb that dune. The tide seemed against me; three quick runs forward, and down I slid again. We are just beginning to see that there is no turning…
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October 17, 2023
What Spirit wants to give you and what you want to cause may or may not be the same.
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October 10, 2023
We are the Northern Lights. Watch us! Green and pink and purple and white. Shimmering, glimmering, whispering, “Watch us! Don’t leave for a moment For each moment is now, each moment is new! If you glance away, you won’t recognize< who we have become. Let yourself breathe deeply in awe. Be with us as we arrange and re‑arrange ourselves each and every moment. Glance away and you will see a new shape, a new expression a re‑invention of ourselves. Be all right with your new world, shape – changing as it is. Rest and accept. See each shape as a…
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September 26, 2023
Let go and love the way the world turns. Be with it. Allow it. Notice it. Even, embrace it. When you rail against it, you become part of the same energy that stopped the flow at the beginning. Be the holder of it. Know that it, too, has a destination to, finally, merge as one with all. Listen deeply to your heart inside and those things you know are anciently true. Trust in your essential wisdom to lead the way. The world is in flux. You will find your way. “All things must pass.” Let them go. May I be…
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September 12, 2023
Dancing in the water, the bright orange sun winks at me through the branches of the pine. The ceiling falling is nothing, being present to such beauty.
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August 29, 2023
You have seenif you give everything the timeto unfold,if you have patience, everythinggrowsto be itselfin its own timing. When you drop down deepinto the Stillness of the Centeryou will findyou are One with it All. The flowers don’t bloom until they are ready.The crocus sleeps under the soil until the spring.The bear awakens only after the winter.Solely in fall can the grapes be harvested. Gravity carries the river to the sea. While man’s world moves at its frantic pace,in accordance with the mind,nature has her own timing. Follow her rules. Grow your gardenin accord with the sun, and you will…
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August 15, 2023
Drop down deep. Beneath the Silence, into the Stillness. There, you will find your Self, Loved Known Held Connected to all the Beings and Things of the Universe. Drop down into your body. Experience your fears as, simply, bodily sensations. When allowed to be they stop consuming you and your attention. When father passed on, and left his body behind, I was told by a seer, he was surprised to find he was young again, playful again, ran with delight across the soft sands near the beach. Drop down deep where you find your own reflection as Source in the…
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August 1, 2023
He was sitting at the Entrance to the lobby, the gateway to the event, when we entered. “Have a great time,” he said, like he meant it. Not a casual remark, but an instruction from a Teacher from beyond. I did. “You deserve it,” he told me later. I passed through the threshold of the lobby to the lawn where the gate keeper took our tickets to heaven. I promised myself I would dance, and I did. Later, as we left the lawn, You know, THAT lawn, where the Great Tree spreads its wings and shelters you in its arms…
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July 18, 2023
(Three Haiku) White birch sheds its bark in tandem with the trunk’s growth, making way for new. The slow, white bark peels off the Birch tree’s trunk, ready for its new skin. White bark like paper peeling its way to new air. The trunk grows to new life.
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July 3, 2023
Inner and Outer Traveling By Amba Gale Being One with the Pine tree across the bay. Pointing upward towards the sun, Pointing downward into the lake. As above, so below. Which way do you wish to go? The Way is both, you know.
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June 20, 2023
Wonder‑fullness fills my first sight, I open my eyes to this day. The sun laughs joyfully over my shoulder, playing with the sea as it dances. The ice on our deck laughs as it melts in the light. First sight. The sweet scent of incense infuses my senses. Bright, bright morning, Filled with play, I enter my day. First sight, and a sacred sense that all is right, Filled with First Sight Yes! Yes! Yes!
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June 6, 2023
Here. Take my hand. Let me lead you to a new land where childhood Innocence sees with new eyes all things new. Sight and insight are woven together like a double helix. The breath of awe and wonder reveals the extraordinary (here—and there–and everywhere) that lies dormant underneath the ordinary until Awakened by Beginner’s Mind. There, the Spirit that lives in all things can be felt, seen, and listened. There, we are never alone.
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May 23, 2023
Gentle breeze stirs the branches of the pine and cottonwood today, as the silver sun swims in the water near our shore. I hear the gentle movement within as well, as Spring comes toward me this year. The Magnolia is budding, beautiful in her white, pink gown, soon to be ready to greet the day in her full glory and then shed that dress for another, donning her green through the summer. Spring arrives without, within. For I can feel the gentle stirring inside as well, as though something is about to happen. Something new, some surprise coming to arrive…
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May 9, 2023
When you are Wonder‑Filled Everything matters. The ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary and your own first sight transports you to bliss. A tree, a cup, a leaf, a magnolia petal. Sit under the Oak. Be delighted by its presence. Drink from the cup. Let your body fill with Warm Happiness. Be with the leaf. And if you listen deeply enough, she will sing to you. When you smile when you sit, the smile will enliven your entire body. If you were blind, having eyes to see with would be miraculous. If you were deaf, hearing the song of the…
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April 25, 2023
This young in heart, gentle man is gifted by his daughter with a birthday gift: one miraculous ticket to the miraculous opening game of the opening day of the baseball season. What a gift, and what a conundrum! What a time for one moment in time, to come to grips with what has integrity. He has an important prior engagement and people to whom he has given his promise. Either way, he is causing a breach– A breach of heart or A breach of word. What does he do? He chooses. He apologizes for the breach of word, making whole…
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April 11, 2023
– Photo taken by Mariel Gale Being in the Space of and holder of the space of and carver of the space for Transformation is not an easy thing nor a light thing nor an un‑rigorous thing. It is not casual, but causal, not serendipitous, but intentional, not wobbly, but Fierce. It demands Total Wholeheartedness, and Courage. The archer shoots the arrow with her bow and hits the target every time. There is no prescription. We must be fluid, and dance with the conversation as it unfolds. This is a wonder. What is it to bring forth such Loving Givingness…
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March 28, 2023
If you worry, notice it. And laugh. You need not bow to the internal voice that craves, more than anything, to grab you and swallow you and take you to a dark place. That does not help, at all, at all. “Will I ever be able to write again?” “Perhaps Spring won’t come this year.” “When will this stupid war be over?” “Will we ever get to travel safely again?” “Am I eating too many carbs?” “Will the weather ever clear up?” “What if my blood pressure goes too high?” “What if…what if…what if…” The possibilities for worry are countless.…
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March 14, 2023
Open your eyes. Open your ears. Open your taste buds. Give space to your fears. Open your touch. Open your heart. Find intuition in this new world apart. Be grateful for Life! It is a gift that’s been given. When you are present, that’s when you are living.
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February 28, 2023
This morning, the white cloud arrested my attention: bird taking flight in its sea of blue. The wind rests gently on the water, a light blanket of softening ripples. Nearer to shore, a duck’s wake makes a circle. What if I should call all this –what I am present to— “amazing?” The white cloud. The bird/cloud taking flight. The wind resting on the water. The duck’s wake. Amazing. Now, some electronic sounds disturb the silence. Every thirty seconds. Amazing. I remember that joyfully, I used to name those cloud shapes as a little girl. Amazing. Cottonwood, there, its limbs bear…
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February 14, 2023
May you step forward into many new journeys new islands for exploration and adventure. May you arrive at each island, intensely curious, open, willing to discover what you didn’t know you didn’t know, an experimenter, an explorer, fresh, and ready to pioneer. May you move in accord with your essential nature. May each of your islands greet your arrival with invitation, welcome, and celebration. May you be open to surprises. May the ferryman in his sturdy wooden boat always be there for you, to take you to your next crossing, after you embody the Teaching of that Island. May you…
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January 31, 2023
May we be with one another, touch our souls, one to one, slowing as we circle in a dance where our hearts beat as one. No breath separates us here, no clashing of the swords gnashing of the teeth, nor wielding of the shields in defensiveness, divisiveness, pretense, and argument. Only the peace and compassion that comes from a well of deep Understanding, of listening to one another’s heartbreak, of knowing the purity of Speaking and Being that comes from listening from love.
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January 17, 2023
(Upon reading “The Woodcarver,” by Chuang Tzu, as we enter 2022) Out there, the green grass of Eire and the unshorn sheep, beyond the rock hewn wall and the wild Atlantic, they hover, like Himalayan mountains whose unattainable peaks call to you as if you were a monk, climbing those impossible stairs ready to go to mass< ready to say your prayers ready for anything God has to give you. Except now. Now you find it is difficult, if not impossible to accept the stairs, the chants, the prayers, the weather of the stormy seas, the monastic life. While the…
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January 3, 2023
From our two‑chaired back dock sitting place (as comfy as a lawn), the sunlit wakes, way across the lake, is how we see them. They are here, now there, now gone. My husband’s feet rest on the dock, light, as we hunger to keep their wake within our sight. They’re small; too small to really catch a glimpse, our sight no match for seeing past this great distance. We do not see them—only their wake— in the green soft stillness of the tree‑mirrored lake. As we seek to join them in their afternoon, we bring out the binoculars and see…
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December 20, 2022
I. The trees are not complex. The pine boughs simply hang towards the earth happily swaying in the wind. II. I can hear the temple bells behind me being played with by the loving wind. III. The candle flickers, flame dancing this way and that, unsure of where it’s going. It doesn’t care. IV. The sea moves up and down mirror of the sky milk cloud melts to dark blue. V The Buddha sits in Silence. Mudra Stilling – try it! Grounded as he sits. VI. All things come and go. Shadows casting shape shifts.…
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December 6, 2022
There is a hidden disturbance in the universe that shows itself in many, and sometimes disruptive, ways. If you meet it with welcoming Grace, it will give you Everything you need to guide yourself and others to a blessed place. This hidden disturbance can only show itself as love if you are kind and welcome it with open arms. Do not let it unravel the fabric of your being. The whole can stay whole with the eyes and ears of a pure and grateful heart.
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November 21, 2022
You are an explorer, a path maker, a step – by – step walker. No one on the entire planet can draw your map for you. Everyone on the entire planet bows to internal and external demands and does so willingly or unwillingly. Best to embrace those demands in a welcoming way, or not accept the demands at all. If this cannot be done, we sacrifice our integrity. Take your pick: Victim or Author– the choice is yours. Awake Alive Conscious People do not plan too much, nor get attached to their plans. Instead, they listen, deeply, and then they…
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November 7, 2022
There is a straight line that only you know how to draw that takes you from here to there or, more precisely, from there to here, in a world of possibility. And, if you follow it you will be true to your own North Star. It will not fail you. No matter the turbulent and unprecedented circumstances of your life. For one thing, you will know that you are being guided. For another, you will know the Guidance is true. The Future, If you let it, will magnetize you into it. Do not let your mind or your considerations, whatever…
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October 25, 2022
The wade to the front dock is deeper than you think. You will get wet and cold. To stand on the front dock and celebrate the sun, the wind, the blue sky and the water, requires some sacrifice. Leave what is dead and time to shed. Leave your old life behind.
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October 11, 2022
I look up up up to the sky as Phoenix rose away from the clouds, said, simply, “I am free. Follow me, if you will. Here is a hint for the good life: Be generous. Give yourself the gift of forgiveness. Let go of your righteousness, and resentment and get free. Once free, declare your own future. Do not let the reasonableness and agreement and dis‑ease of the day deter you from creating a life of joy. Just let yourself fly, fly far from the ashes of your last life of yesterday. Carry with you only that which protects like…
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September 26, 2022
Let the Path come to you. It will, you know. You do not have to seek it or strive for it or work for it, or exhaust yourself, or push yourself or another. You just have to find what you love in the inner heart of your heart and follow that path. Like the Great blue who, simply, stretches his great wings and becomes a straight arrow – long feathered tail – long neck long beak everything aligned, one with another, flying northwards towards his next home, compass set. Purposeful. Great wings move body gently effortlessly uplifted easily by the…
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September 12, 2022
Perhaps,after all,there is nothing to do but be, to drop inside, deep inside, and merge with what gives me peace. Perhaps,the path is to facethe sacred momentsgranted to meone by one by one by one by oneby the ever Living, ever Giving, Stream of Grace. Perhapsall this building outsidehas outrun its course.and my work is simple. What is mine will come to me of its own accord. “Patience,” counsels the inner voice. “Find your purpose in ‘Wait.’ Walk inside, where you can merge with the Great Blue Heron who waits patiently.” This absence of strivingbrings meto a bed of Deep…
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August 30, 2022
Be fearlessas you ride the lion of your heart. Be stillas you wait.Your future will unfold,just as it does. Go beyondthe fieldof right and wrongas you witnesseach new event appearing before you. Your daughter will be fine.She knows her heartand her way will unwindfor the teaching. Do not godown the roadthat disappearsinto the dark woods. Stay with the bird you see,flitting from branch to branch, joyful. Be free.
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August 16, 2022
I awoke last night. wind howling in a haunting cry, disturbing even my gentle house, rattling windows, shaking me out of my slumber. as if to arouse me from my sleep, as if to warn me about complacency a and the deep deadness that arrives from a life of too much familiarity. You awoke last night. wind howling in a haunting cry, disturbing even your gentle house, rattling windows, shaking you out of your slumber, as if to arouse you from my sleep, as if to warn me about complacency and the deep deadenss that arrives from a life of…
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August 2, 2022
For years I tried to be someone I was not. Then, a crisis, and then I worked, I prayed, I went in deep into my heart. I met teachers, and met The Teacher in myself. I opened to Mystery, sought and called forth Source, and found that Spirit moves through me, through us all. I wrought a work of Giving and became generous, honed, still, fashioned myself to serve, through time. The more I grew the more I learned to be humble, and to be at peace. “I am still learning,” says the Artist from the Ancient Well of Spirit…
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July 19, 2022
Imagine yourself a leaf, being carried by the river. There, you will know Peace. Imagine yourself a feather being danced by the wind that carries. There you will know Joy. Imagine yourself a lake, rained on by the clouds There, you will know Fullness. Imagine yourself a stream, being a bed for the salmon. There you will know Birth and Death. Imagine yourself an ear, listening to another’s heart. There, you will meet Compassion. Imagine yourself a heron, fishing the abundant water. There, you will be Patience. Imagine yourself as a poet, facing the blank, white page. There, you will…
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July 6, 2022
On a star studded, vibrant – with – the – breath – of – the – cold wind night, I pick my way down the rocky steps and branches climbing out of the soil. I don’t trip, as I am present to those branches even from their rocky bed, singing to me: “You can’t stop me from growing.” I like that song. It’s wild. It’s authentic. It’s real. I pick my way, I stumble my way, down to the dock, where the joy in my heart and the ecstasy of my Being join the shimmering, dancing, appearing, then disappearing, Glory…
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June 20, 2022
I stop and still myself that I might listen. I stop. Where is the light? Who am I in the face of this dis‑ease? Who are you? What are we to say to a world that has gone mad with grief with war with disarray with avoiding its own waking up? We stop. We rest. We stop that we may ask these questions. We stop that we may amplify that wise voice within that we might hear the guiding notes, the harmonies underneath that will show us the way from here in the middle of these dark woods, that a…
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June 7, 2022
When Heart break makes its way toward us from the farthest horizon, we start to close in fear that we will be flattened by the loss, never to stand again. When heart breaks come close like this, we close ourselves, Never to face or feel our wounds. The brittle heart is easy to break. Pain shut off and shoved aside hides in the years until a time when fearless heart we grow and our fierce soul takes on the past, releases all our tears and heals the broken heart. Broken open now. Breaking open, Not apart; This is how I…
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May 23, 2022
The sun is bright today. The sea is calm, the water close upon our shore. The houses on the cliff away greet the sun in peace. Nearby, three candles light my way to day and tell me I am safe. Still groundless int his time of chaos, I embrace the groundlessness, speak that I am well, that all is well. And all goes to its destination as though there were a guiding hand. The tide goes in. The tide goes out. the rhythms of the tide are clear. And life moves towards its destination as if there were a guiding…
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May 6, 2022
Hello, Merced you green flowing graceful Queen of all the rivers, sunlight sparkling like jewels on your robe of green, glowing with your laughter through my childhood, sewing all my younger days with gladness, growing with me, as I lean into life. May I flow, like you, Surprised, joyful, delighted by the currents carrying me to my own sea.
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April 26, 2022
Let the warm tea slowly glide across your tongue. Let your eyes fall gently upon the cat on his back, carrying the brightly lit fire. Let the sun sparkles to your right remind you that you live near water on blessed land. Let your mind’s eye take you to just the other day, when you and your daughter gazed out the window where five seals covered, one with fin and tail in the air, the current carrying their sleek sweet bodies and bobbing heads as they surrendered to the rocking of the sea. Sometimes, the barks of the seals in…
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April 11, 2022
A blind child guided by his mother admired the cherry blossoms.–Kikakou Perspective Creates Our World Three Viewpoints,Upon Reading Kikakou’s Haiku in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening By Amba Gale The son Darkness, they think. Yet, touching you, Your beauty speaks, reaches, deepens, touches my own. While inside, it is dark, where I am real and hidden, I see perfectly. I absorb your delicacy, your pink color, your love, deep in my heart, and celebrate. The Loving Mother Guiding my son, I have pity, for he cannot see the color of the cherry blossom. And yet, I have just seen through…
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March 29, 2022
Oh, sleek, slim, tall masted sailing ship, anchored so gracefully outside my window, beckoning me to all the places I have yet to go, inside and out, you call to me. Now, I travel miles each day inside to the still place to turn a fleet of worthies toward the light, coming out of darkness, as we all have been, cocooned in separated wombs, some broken, some whole. We can now emerge, reveal our late protected hearts. We want to weep to grieve to laughe to hug to see the light to show our fears and faces, hidden for two…
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March 15, 2022
First the dark, the cold, except for all the brilliance in the night sky, singing from the light of the stars. A stage behind me, where soon a song would be sung, the stage of Camp Curry: first home to the visitors of this valley I hold dear. And then a voice from the woods, down in the valley, calls high up the wall, calls up the granite to the man on the mountain, the man high above, where the fire had been tended all the long day, long preparing for this event, the event of my childhood. “Hello Glacier…
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March 1, 2022
I was afraid no poetic words would come to me this morning, surrounded by the grief and loss and sadness in the world, as I am. “Where is Peace to be found?” I ask. And then I realized my life itself is the poem.
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February 15, 2022
Slowly, ever so slowly, one by one, they opened. Heart by heart, they spoke. Story by simple story, they let us in to the truth of lives lost and gained. With each speaking, a shedding. With each speaking, a new heart opened like a rose petal in the spring sunlight, little by little coming out of winter little by little coming out of the grief little by little coming into the peace. Even those who never cry, having bowed to fear as their god, shed tears those days, shared with us their wounds, exposing their hearts for all to hear.…
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February 1, 2022
Stir your tea slowly. See the ways it swirls in your cup. Stop your thinking by being with the tea. Let the flavors out. Let the stirring awaken the life in the magic powder from the east. Let the tea stir your own blood, awakening your heart’s breath. Invite and welcome your heart to speak. Take pen in hand, and let it kiss the white page with words that guide, words that nourish, words that marry you to you, words that dive words that carry you to view another place. And when you think you have finished with your poem…
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January 18, 2022
You have learned your lesson in the last while, a December like no other, when, like an Irish curragh on a rough sea as you left one pilgrim island and rowed to the next, the boat capsized and there you were in the ten – foot waves and the rough seas, fighting for your soul. Yes. You Saw what you needed to see: the power and necessity of Alertness, of Presence, without which you are asleep, without which you will flail in the water, and could, perhaps, even, crash on the rocks underneath you, and drown forever in a bad…
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January 4, 2022
Through the wall of frozen water, I see the earth behind, shimmering, singing of life, as the icicle drops from my roof. I can barely see it, hear it, dim as it is. Like the icicle, behind the ice of these wintry days, hard have we become. May our own hearts, warmed by the winter sun climbing north in these early January days, as the melting ice drips slowly, peek out tenderly, gingerly, caringly, greeting each day as a gift, a new year, revealing the sights and sounds of a loving earth.
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December 21, 2021
Your reluctance to make peace with yourself, to love yourself, your younger self, that is, can now be seen, and named. The demons that usually block the entrance to the temple door now beckon you to come in. You have to do one thing only: Put your arm around your younger self (the one that hurt the most) give up the reluctance, and speak. It does not matter how old you were. Put your arm around yourself. Speak your compassion. Speak your connection. Speak your understanding. And, finally, and most importantly, speak your love. And, then, keep on walking through…
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November 24, 2021
Slowly, ever so slowly, one by one, they opened. Heart by heart, they spoke. Story by simple story, they let us in to the truth of lives lost and gained. With each speaking, a shedding. With each speaking, a new heart opened like a rose petal in the spring sunlight, little by little coming out of winter little by little coming out of the grief little by little coming into the peace. Even those who never cry, having bowed to fear as their god, cried, shared with us their wounds, exposing their heart for all to see. As the Silence…
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November 9, 2021
Your beloved Merced embraces you in its arms, singing its happiness. Just your name brings back to hear and thought the delightful pleasure of hearing your voice laughing for the very first time Just as your river flows and dances, gurgles, and prances, around, above and under Great Boulders that give you your voice, like white horse mains leaping, flying, cavorting over the hills, Just like that‑ Like the bubbles and whirlpools, white water falls and rushing speeding non‑stop racing my heart, too, races my ears open to your sounds of singing and all my senses awaken to your Voice.…
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October 26, 2021
Somewhere in the fall of this second year still in the passage still in the migration still moving into Stillness still not hearing the future, we nourish our spirit. The ghosts of what might have been are leaving now, to plague us no longer with their voices and their “coulda, woulda, shoulda” charms, and drop photos in our minds which leave us with regrets. Let their bony fingers wave goodbye to this time of grieving for what might have been. Time, instead, for new words: Accept. Embrace. Surrender. Create. Choose. Trust. We can look newly at the sea the sun…
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October 12, 2021
“Pick up your pen and write,” she says, that wise and ancient Voice: the devoted Muse, speaking to me in the grey morning, white ball of sun in the sky, in the water, below. Below, where the surface conversation has long since disappeared, I ask a private question: “Of what shall I write?” “Anything you hear in the deep well of your own heart.” “Write about the loon mourning the days away. Write about the turtle who belongs in the pond among the lilies. Write about a world of wonders. Write about me, who will always encourage you to find…
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September 27, 2021
Hello, Great Blue! You, who walk so stealthily, so faithfully, so gracefully, so quietly, on your long, lanky, legs, looking, waiting for your first, tasty morsel from the sea, yellowing sea. Good morning, Great Blue, Long Necked Warrior of the Morning birds, you, who work so attentively alertly, keen for your morning fish. looking outwards toward the rising, brightening, sun. Do you watch for the sun to rise? Are you single pointedly moving towards the exact place where the fish meet your beak? This is the way I want to awaken each day, saying hello to the wild world before…
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September 15, 2021
On the porch now. I drink my morning healing tea. The aroma and warmth make my body feel good, like I am meant to be here. It is always good to know that I am meant to be where I am. The sailboat, with its white, full sail glides soundlessly, effortlessly, past the island nearby, wind at its tail. I glide effortlessly into no time. There, I find my Inner guide, speaking a blessing: May the divine wind lift my sails of trust, May I intuit and attune, allowing the breeze to carry me effortlessly home, knowing that I am…
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August 31, 2021
The Universe took one Great Breath and cracked you open Exposing your Heart for all to see. And you raised your Great Arms in celebration of your woundedness, Up, up to the sky.
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August 17, 2021
Underneath the preoccupations of the world and of my mind, Silence Speaks. I need but listen: “Let the fog engulf you, make a cocoon around you today as you read or write or cook or wash. Do not let the pulls of your mind with its tentacles of glue pull you into stories of past, of present, of future. Let the fog lift, as it does, revealing those silent islands in the mist of time in the midst of space. Let the sun shine through, bless you, and let you know you are on holy ground.”
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August 3, 2021
May I dream a deep, blue sleep while fire eats hungrily the wood, the stove top silent, content to be still, as outside purple sounds of earth settle into night. May the waves of sleep carry me to its farthest shores, stilling my beating mind of worry, healing my breathing heart of fear. Let the waves break there upon the land beyond the current horizon where lake shore rocks are ground through the gift of time into small pebbles, smooth to touch, and soft and easy sand that feet can walk on. Loons eat them to get their food down.…
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July 20, 2021
“Pick up your pen and write,” she says, that wise and ancient Voice: the devoted Muse, speaking to me in the grey morning, white ball of sun in the sky, in the water, below. Below, where the surface conversation has long since disappeared, I ask a private question: “Of what shall I write?” “Anything you hear in the deep well of your own heart.” “Write about the loon mourning the days away. Write about the turtle who belongs in the pond among the lilies. Write about a world of wonders. Write about me, who will…
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July 6, 2021
If I were a tree, I would be the dancing Cottonwood, waving at me, at us all, arms delighting in the dance of the early evening breeze. I would not know or care whose property I’m on. I would not ask how long I’m going to live. Or if God exists. I would not worry that some months hence my leaves are going to fall and my branches will get bony. I just would wave my arms in pure ecstasy to be alive, at one with the wind who holds me in his arms. Some of my leaves would be…
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June 22, 2021
Be a clearing! An empty vessel in which you can hear and taste the future filling the vessel with miraculous and astonishing surprises – the unexpected: musical food for the Heart
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June 8, 2021
Sometimes it’s time to hide, to go deep inside the well to descend into the whirlpool of wounds, of losses and griefs that ask to inhabit your mind and heart for a while. There, you have good and necessary work to do, to let your wounds bring you to compassion. Within this time, while you follow the slow and circuitous path of your heart, remember to love yourself, care for yourself while feeling your way through the pain. Know the rawness of your griefs. You and they are trustworthy. You must listen to them speak, transforming you and softening your…
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May 25, 2021
Now come the rhodies, ripe with red and readiness singing Spring, while my greening magnolia tree greets the sea. Magnificent each morning in her pink green dress changing each day. No morn is like the last. My own garden lets me know: Not only is change inevitable Not only do our little deaths give way to new births Not only if we give our focused attention, we will have the gift of amazement. Not only do the ever flowering blossoms drop to the ground making rich the soil with their pink and…
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May 11, 2021
Deep within the garden of love the peonies turn their bright faces to the sun and celebrate, fully accepting themselves and each other’s beauty.
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April 27, 2021
May the Spring’s abundant flowers, white and pink and yellow swell my heart with gladness, fill me with their surprises of sweetness and of glory, as I turn my face toward the natural world, once again. May the tight budding of the magnolia tree inside my heart slowly ripen to a full flowering, accompanying me, during these days with its delicate sweetness, springing toward life. May this tree of friendship in our yard as it blossoms into its own fullness in the next many days mirror, and beckon to me, the blossoming the ripening …
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April 13, 2021
Lest you forget who you are, let a mighty flame surround you with its sweet incense smell, carry you back through your heart’s eye and all that you hold dear, to that place in the ashram of your body you pray and remember who you are. Let yourself be found by the pure soil of your soul, the ground where all seeds flourish. Be bound by the marriage of your breath with spirit. Don’t so get caught up in the world in ways you don’t want to be remembered. Let the earth the air water and fire spirit you to…
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March 30, 2021
The wick in my candle has grown so long during these months and years of cocooning, hibernation, lock down, break down, re‑imagining. What is the ing word that you choose? Sheltering, healing, grieving, fearing, worrying, discovering, learning, re‑setting, pausing, stopping, serving, practicing, re‑imagining, kindness‑ing, giving gratitude, living in wonder, improvising, inventing, stand taking breaking through, contributing, celebrating, creating perspective, learning, giving Joy. Choose your words, carefully. Each word gives, gives you your life. Speaks, speaks you in this threshold coursing time; speaks your meaning, speaks your purpose, speaks your life, brings you and your world into Being.
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March 17, 2021
Look beyond yourself. Look first to the farthest horizon where lake meets sky, and then, even further. Take one easy paddle towards that horizon and notice how the wake appears, then disappears, behind you. Pilgrim, You must not go back. Only the open lake in front of you with no shoreline to mark your way. Listen with your heart. Your heart knows the way. “The happy heart is true,” St Brigid speaks. Follow your joy. I know you can live wholeheartedly, that you can be who you choose to be. I know That you can paint your life with the…
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March 3, 2021
Across the still lake
Cloud Eagle swoops ‘neath snow trees.
Forest and falls call.
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February 16, 2021
Dark green vines wet
and deep with color lie
with ease on gnarled maple bark
while below, the river gaily dances its way
to the lake, singing all the while: Fall’s Creek.
This is my birthday hike.
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February 2, 2021
A sudden gust—
I hear the movement of the trees
calling me to give them my attention
telling me to turn my head from the computer screen
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January 5, 2021
Three‑layered bank of fog.
Hills, mountains, Cascades
hover on the Sound,
a soft, stealthy cat guarding its treasure,
halfway between our shore and the sand spit.
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December 22, 2020
Let
the opportunity of these times
fill your heart with gratefulness.
Can you not see
that everything around you
is calling for a new perspective
and that you
are hungry for
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December 21, 2020
Teachings from another time are given: All is well and “shall be well.” Live in faith, know deep in heart, that endings soon (in their own time) give rise to new beginnings, and only with completion can a new beginning start. And I must rise to the tide of my life’s calling for giving endings where those endings are now due. “What must I complete?” “What endings must I cause?” I’m called to ask. Here, the heart can grow and gladden with Completion’s teaching: All is Well, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be…
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December 8, 2020
Thin pine boughs tremble,
chilled and thrilled as they beckon
cold winter to come.
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November 24, 2020
The first big blow and the rest of the fall leaves fall to the ground, dancing wildly with the wind, making no sound. Except if you listen underneath this wild presentation to the real conversation, you will hear: Meet me here, just here, and now, in the passing of this season into next. Meet me here in nature with your full attention and I will lead you to wonder. Meet me here with your full attention your full presence your full concentration and you will know Gratitude.
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November 9, 2020
This is my Poetry Corner.
This is where each morning
I light the candles
and watch the incense smoke
gently rise, and circle, to the ceiling of my room.
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October 26, 2020
Even here,
somewhere in the middle
of these dark days,
somewhere in the middle of this Crossing,
where lives upended stumble
blindly through their days…
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October 6, 2020
This fog filled morning
the bright lights of our family room
illuminate the whale.
Leaping with joy, he flies…
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September 28, 2020
Oh, Great Blue,
with your great grey span of wings gliding
graceful over silent grey sea:
What are you speaking to me, this morning?…
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September 15, 2020
Drop
Down
Deep.
Drop down,
beneath the Silence
where the Voice
of your Soul
— the Creative Imagination — can find you
and guide you…
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August 26, 2020
Allow
the soft tree tops of your body
to welcome the sun in the morning,
to dispel the worries,
to greet you with their glorious
embrace of this new day.
New, as if the sun arising from the horizon…
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