Poem: Forgiveness

Forgiveness

I enter the room, an uninvited guest,
Passing by the stares --
Shadows from my past:
The one I used for comfort,
The one who clawed my flesh,
The one I shamed,
The one who wept in my arms,
The one I held too close,
The one I pushed away.

To keep it warm,
I hold my most beautiful alabaster flask
Against my heart.
Unashamed, with soft fingertips,
I will stroke its fragrant oil
Across your forehead.

The thought of that --
Of your loving gaze --
And I collapse to my knees,
Weeping.
Bathing your feet with my tears,
Drying them with my hair,
Kissing them,
Smoothing the warm oil over them --
I cannot stop weeping.

You say this is great love I show;
You tell me to go in peace
And I wonder
How I will carry the pain
Of this much forgiveness.


-- meganthemegan
June 17, 2007
From a meditation on Luke 7:36-50

Where I'll be staying in Italy next Easter Season

Click on the picture:

Getting Ready for Italy

Poem: Between Two Worlds

(A poem I wrote for Lovey before her death)

Friends, please hold me in your Light
As I struggle between two worlds.

The message my angels gave me --
A date on a calendar --
A vision of grace and butterflies --
The songs my bird guardians sang --
The doctors’ prognosis --
My friends giving us money and food --
My heart, too strong to stop beating,
But too weak to sit by the water’s edge.

Death is ignoring all that.
My earth-bound ‘committee’ is shaming me with all that.
And my faith has been chased away by all that.

Friends, please hold me in your Light
As I struggle between two worlds.

To learn the new language my angels are speaking;
To understand that Death ignores calendars, but so does Love;
That this universe holds fear and demons as well as grace and butterflies
And maybe you can’t have one without the other;
To hear the higher frequency of the bird songs;
To know doctors are humans
Which sometimes means basically clueless;
That I haven’t taken from my friends,
I’m just not too good at receiving;
That this heart gives me another day to be with Marilyn
....And another day to forgive myself all these struggles
....And another day to be very angry, and very sad, and very afraid
.......and then to eat some chocolate
.......and remember all the cakes I baked
.......and all the love I’ve given
And have faith in your faith when I can’t find mine.

-- meganthemegan for Lovey
5/8/2007

Poem: Meeting

Meeting

The things I didn’t get to
Or failed at doing
Or did very well indeed;

The little plans that trapped me in agendas;
The sweet designs that wrapped me in joy;

All have brought me to this hour
With these friends, in this room
To begin again
With a moment of silence
To do with as You wish.

-- meganthemegan

4/20/2007

For Dr. Gil
San Damiano

Poem: Lunar Eclipse

Pink Moon
Tomorrow in Africa
Will they look up into the sky
And wonder about
Light and Darkness?
Will they feel this earth turn
Then rest for awhile
Between sun and moon?

Who gazes on the beauty
Cast by your shadow?



--meganthemegan 3/2/2007
(with thanks to wordgirldlw on youtube for Nick Drake's song)

Poem: Thank you, Ovid

Thank you, Ovid

The seer prophesied long years and ripe old age
But only if he never knew himself:
Never looked into still or stormy waters,
Never gazed on his own beauty
Or stared into his shame.

Is what you perceive only the
Shadow of reflected form:
Nothing of you is in it?

No, friends, these smiling eyes
Are not a shadow.
You are seeing Love reflected.

I sense it and
I am not deceived
By my truest image.

What I have,
I want.

Listen to Echo’s response:
What is mine
Is yours.


-- meganthemegan 2/20/2007

Poem: Winter Garden

Winter Garden

Taken as a whole,
The garden is disheveled --
Decay everywhere,
Branches broken,
Leaves yellow with frostbite,
Plants dead after too many icy nights.

Yet my eyes search out and find
The green shoots,
The new flowers in defiant spring color,
The summer blossoms that refused to give up.

Are they offering forgiveness
For not having cleaned up the leaves when they fell,
For not having given the limbs some support,
For not having protected what was fragile?

Will the colors still shimmering in my heart
Remind me only of what I failed to do

Or will they offer me
That same forgiveness?

-- meganthemegan 2/11/2007

Poem: Closing the Gate

Closing the Gate

I am closing the gate to this garden
Where dreams were sown in good soil and bad.
Whether watchfully tended or foolishly ignored,
Smothered or left thirsty --
In the end, they scattered the same message
Which only now this gardener is willing to hear.

I planted one tree that thrives and grows strong
In spite of a cruel early spring storm;
And another that someone had neglected
I transplanted here and nurtured back to health.
If they are the only success from this garden,
Will that be enough to forgive all my other failures?

I spent most of my life and all of my heart here,
Chasing the dreamworld perfumes promised,
The passion that beckoned in lush blooms,
The devotion pledged by reliable seasons,
The joy of blossoms flouting oncoming frost.

Here, one time and late in my life,
I fell in love, and worshipped that harvest’s moon.
When it waned and there was no union
My heart that once wound easily around
Both smooth and thorny branches
Lost its resiliency and now knows
It will not spring back if bent down by another storm.

So I am closing the gate to this garden.
The seeds of dreams sown here will
Find their way to other beds and blossom there,
Perhaps tended by a gardener

Who listens
And finds her beloved under a different harvest moon.



--meganthemegan 1/25/2007

Poem: Labyrinth

Labyrinth

I have taken the narrow path
To the heart of the matter
Hoping for
a revelation,
a radical shift,
a fresh perspective,
a different dream --
Only to find my self there once again
Unchanged.

The twists and turns
In this pathway
Have offered up no lessons.

So I have given up on the center.
Today I want to lie down
Along the outer edge,
Curve my body
Along smooth wet stones,
Put my ear against
A frozen jagged rock
And listen for its sound.



-- meganthemegan 1/20/07

Poem: Story on Canvas

Story on Canvas

If I set my story onto canvas
Which colors would I choose
To tone down the rages,
To brush out the hurts,
To spatter light into the absences?

Or would I paint it from memory:
Unbalanced, too many colors,
Conflicting angles and
Strokes dragged reluctantly
To fill up space?

The artist,
The critic,
The observer –
None of us would know
Which one was counterfeit.


-- meganthemegan 1/14/2007

Lovey's Circle...

As visits and phone calls are now reserved just for family and caretakers, I’ve created a blog for Lovey’s friends where we can post well wishes for her journey and love and care for each other at

http://loveyscircle.blogspot.com

Also, please join us in taking a few moments each day at 10am and 6pm to envision her walking with grace and joy into her new journey – surrounded, of course, by butterflies!

Poem: What Friends Sometimes Wish

What Friends Sometimes Wish

Just a handshake and the cancer would retreat,
Just a touch on the arm and his pain would go away,
Just a hug and she’d be able to get some sleep --
-- We wish our hands could perform some miracles today.

Just a kiss on the forehead and demon screams would stop,
Just an arm around the shoulder to keep the night terrors at bay,
Just a caress on the cheek and the raging fever would drop --
-- We wish our hands could perform some miracles today.

Perhaps our jokes pull you back from sad tomorrows,
Maybe our laughter helps your heart to dance and play,
We hope our smiles send some light into your sorrows,
But we wish our hands could perform some miracles today.


-- meganthemegan 1/7/2007

Poem: Circles Ever Widening

Circles Ever Widening

A fingertip to a pond’s glass surface
Creates circles, ever widening;
A far greater display than my light touch could imagine.
Perhaps this is how we reach each other:
A kind word to a heart’s glass surface
Creates circles ever widening
A far greater impact than the word could imagine.



-- meganthemegan, 11/26/2006

Poem: Thank You God, How Can I Help

Thank You God, How Can I Help

Three years ago, a cruel genetic whim,
Apocalyptic rants, belligerent eyes,
Buildings screaming, people staring at him,
Afraid of the terror that he felt inside.

Three years ago, under a night sky filled
With cold stars, I weep a mother’s worst fear,
So afraid he will die or be killed,
Crying into a void I thought could not hear.

Three years ago, the cold stars become warm,
Something greater than human eyes can see,
Holds me close, embraced by a loving arm,
To my heart come the words “He will be with Me.”

Three days ago, clowning around with a friend,
His memory of terror by now has grown dim.
We did not know how those dark times would end
But my son’s warm eyes tell God loves being with him.



--meganthemegan, December 8, 2006

Poem: Jazz Memory

Jazz Memory

A sweet blue light
Riding the high notes
Coming at me, delighted,
Wanting to play wild
And rest peaceful.
I reach out to touch tease it,
To please it,
To gentle it down with
Kisses on the forehead,
To hold it near and dearly.
But it slides away into
That was then,
And this is now.

And it takes another soft light
Coming in grounded on bass notes,
Wanting to calm care comfort
Wanting to hold me near and dearly,
Wanting to remind me
What was then
Will always be in now.

-- meganthemegan 11/7/2006

Poem: Halloween Poem

Halloween Poem

Last night many kings came to my door
and beautiful African princesses --
a monster or two,
Spiderman once or twice.

The little ones delighted by my witch hat
    because this witch did not bend over to eat them
but crouched down to greet them
   with a smile, on their level.

Then the ones for whom
   this would be the last Trick or Treat
until they hold the hands
  of their own little ones on chilly October nights.
I heard their joy -
  one night to not act like teenagers
who know everything and are pretending to be bored.

When is it we get too old
To knock on a stranger’s door
And ask for something sweet?

--meganthemegan 11/1/2006

Poem: Shards of Ice

Shards of Ice

At one time, pieces of a rainbow,
Before it collapsed
Under the weight of
kindness ignored,
love not cherished,
too little wonder,
miracles blindly denied.

Now shards of ice melting in your hand --
Hold them gently friend,
And know they will melt,
Fall to the ground,
Join a river,
Turn into vapor,
Become a rainbow once again.

--meganthemegan 10/23/2006

Poem: Something Fell

Something Fell

Something fell – I pause and listen:
A petal from the rose I picked?
The note to self I wrote a year ago?
A star the night sky could no longer hold
Or the wishes made upon it?

Something fell – there was no crash,
No tremor or splintering glass.
The universe still holds its shape.
It might have gone unnoticed or been denied
But the heart hears the softest sigh.

Something fell – into place perhaps;
The lesson will show itself in time.
But now the absence, the hole it left,
Calls for reflection and time to decide
If it will be sealed off or filled.

--meganthemegan 10/11/2006

Poem: Truth Hidden

Truth Hidden

Whether soul mates who have lost our way home
Or shipmates who forget the reason for this voyage,
Too often, loving one or many --
As if loving ‘one’ proves loyalty
Or loving ‘many’ generosity --
truth gets hidden in the fog of our artifice.

The deceit in a too perfect kiss,
The touch without a tremble,
Façades of tenderness, passion in costume --
So well contrived,
Everyone fakes ecstasy
When deception is the starting point.

Side conversations held in shallow coves,
As if avoiding Love’s swift currents
Will somehow assure safety.
Memories of drowning
Do not serve us well on this ocean,
And I do not want to talk about the weather
When there is lightning in my heart.

Knowing home is where Love leads,
My North Star the dream of my beloved,
This traveler tries to find
The right map for these stormy seas.
Each route taken strips off the veils,
Finds a way through fog and smoke and mirrors,
Beloved - when I find you,
I will have found my way home.

-- meganthemegan 9/27/2006

Poem: For Lovey

My friend, may this day celebrate
The wise and loving woman
Whose thank you cards always seem to arrive
Just when I am feeling not so grateful;
Whose smile lights a room;
Who makes the best pineapple upside down cake
Anyone has ever tasted.

You have said your angels are letting you know
It's time to give up the struggle.
You are asking your friends to stop praying for miracles,
To just walk beside you until the time when we say goodbye.
While we hope that time is many, many years away
Forgive us if we stumble sometimes and weep,
We are still bound and blinded by earth
While you are freed by the sight of heaven before you.

-- meganthemegan 9/9/06

Poem: What is Distance?

What is Distance?

What is distance?
Sometimes miles only mark geography
And other times
There are canyons in every inch.

I fell into one of those canyons
When I turned to say
“Have you seen the moon tonight?”
And saw you were locking the door between us.

And then minutes later a joke about a scene
Collapses the bridge, folds up the miles,
Disintegrates the canyons
Between your door and mine.

So what is distance
If the heart cannot take its measure --
No one is ever too far away
When everything is held right here.

--meganthemegan 8/27/2006

Lessons about Love -- Rilke Book of Hours I,17

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth-
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of the evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

Ranier Maria Rilke Book of Hours I,17

Lessons about Love -- Excerpts from Juan de la Cruz 'Spiritual Canticle'

1. Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag
after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.

2. Shepherds, you who go
up through the sheepfolds to the hill,
if by chance you see
him I love most,
tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

3. Seeking my love
I will head for the mountains and for watersides;
I will not gather flowers,
nor fear wild beasts;
I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

4. O woods and thickets
planted by the hand of my Beloved!
O green meadow,
coated, bright, with flowers,
tell me, has he passed by you?

5. Pouring out a thousand graces,
he passed these groves in haste;
and having looked at them,
with his image alone,
clothed them in beauty.

6. Ah, who has the power to heal me?
Now wholly surrender yourself!
Do not send me
any more messengers;
they cannot tell me what I must hear.

.....

32. When you looked at me
your eyes imprinted your grace in me;
for this you loved me ardently;
and thus my eyes deserved
to adore what they beheld in you.

34. Do not despise me;
for if, before, you found me dark,
now truly you can look at me
since you have looked
and left in me grace and beauty.

Lessons about Love

Like any personal love relationship that

fulfills,

elevates,

transforms,

so grace makes us more and more like God.

Syzygy -- was that you (or just Carl messing with my head again?)

Remember those nights, Aeons and Aeons ago, when we arranged the black lights so we could see our shadow selves? When you asked me to dress up as a trickster and whisper sweet genderized indefinite articles into your ear while dancing to ‘Chesed – have Chesed, baby’?

It all ended too soon. I remember the morning when your anima got her knickers in a twist, screaming “The next time I find a bunch of your acausal connecting principles all tangled and slimy in the bathroom sink, I’m gonna mess with your mandala SO BAD .” Mana, oh mana, oh mana – were you pissed! (But let’s be honest, you weren’t no Superman yourself, you know.)

And then there was the issue about my "Great" Mother –- she kinda got in the way a lot, didn't she?

But please believe me when I tell you I have cleaned up my idiosynchronicities and I’m ready to commit to the principle of equivalence. All that, plus my animus no longer snores – I mean, what more could a Hero want?

I can sense, I can think, I can feel, I can intuit – but it just ain’t the same without you. Please come back to me! I have potentials for significance and would love to share them and my latest additions to the collective unconscious with you.

-- Your Maiden (aka mtm)

(Dear Dr. Jung -- please -- now maybe I can get some sleep??)

-- this is in or around some alchemical alley under the moon

meganthemegan 1/15/2006

Now is the Time (Hafiz)

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

Prayer of Saint Francis

O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sorrow, joy.

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Poem: How Can I Say

How Can I Say

How can I say “I love him”
If learning a new song on my guitar
just seems like too much work?

How can I say “I love him”
When I was angry at a stranger
who got in my way?

How can I say “I love him”
If I have pretended to be wise
When I am really just a new student?

How can I say “He is my heart’s desire”
If I have not offered him anything
Other than my desire?

-- meganthemegan, December 26, 2005

Poem: I Keep Falling For It

I Keep Falling For It

I keep falling for it
And each time pick myself up
And turn to walk a different direction,
Thinking east or west will make a difference,
Forgetting the earth is round.

I keep falling for it
And each time think I’ve learned a new lesson
And for a moment feel incredibly wise
Until I see the footnotes I left the last time I was here
When I wrote, “This time, I’ve learned my lesson.”

I keep falling for it
And each time say “I’ve reached a new level of understanding”
And take great pride in my bravery
While my cowardice skulks behind the truth
That ‘levels of understanding’ is a ridiculous phrase.

I keep falling for it
in spite of all factual evidence, all logic,
all reason, all experience that has shown
that hitting the ground hurts like hell.

I keep falling for it
Because your loving smile
Convinces me
That I can fly.

--meganthemegan, December 18, 2005

Poem: Love's Lesson

Love's Lesson

In your arms, my sigh escaped
from deepest desire, hidden under dust
of years of duties that life had shaped.
The yearnings denied, Love held in trust.

From your loving look, a seventh wave,
(and I had stopped counting so long ago),
swept away the dust but took care to save
the bright jewel now shining in its flow.

Was I too quick to seize its light
that shimmered awake after years asleep?
So hungry, with both hands I clutched it tight,
and forgot it was something I cannot keep.

Now in your eyes an empty distance
reminding me how it was I failed:
in clinging to a single instance
Love’s flow was stopped, its color paled.

That jewel, now tethered by this loss
to other losses not yet grieved
reflects only just how great the cost
of not believing what I once believed:

That Love needs neither proof nor claim,
its length not measured by a point in time.
May its power prove greater than my shame
in clutching it to make it mine.

May this loss teach me to let Love be --
to hold it precious, not hold it tight;
that any jewel it presents to me
I return to its source, to its own light.

-- meganthemegan, November 13, 2005

I Have Five Things To Say

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside of love, the resurrection-place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.
Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.
Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?
Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

-- Rumi

Poem: On Getting Laid Off

(This was written to my co-workers when we got abruptly laid off from some dot.com)

What a GREAT group -- there is no equal,
but is there life after EEX SQL?
There was life before, this I know,
and DR came before Domino.

In fact, keep in mind the Domino Theory,
when sending out resumes makes you weary,
"Something sets off a train of events"
and it's all an adventure -- that's my 2 cents.

It's not fair we couldn't thrive on Desktop Recruiter,
while some dude gets rich off a new scooter.
Is life now half empty, or a full half a cup?
What DO I want to be when I grow up?

Return to an office and wear business clothes?
(No -- I'm NEVER going back to those damn panty hose!)
Open my own business -- but if there's a loss?
Besides, I'd have a real bitch for a boss.

Send prayers to God, Allah, Jupiter, or Juno --
Or forward them on to the One named Nuno!
We do not know our fate in the Great Plan,
(I just hope there's always someone around like Stan.)

Will Trinet cover our vacation pay?
Or will the Labor Commissioner have a say?
Intellectual property and where are the assets?
Need a legal degree to figure those facets.

But what about bills, my mortgage, my Dental?
Will I stay healthy, or will I go mental?
Such serious pondering leaves no room for laughter…
And I must remember in the great Hereafter:

When we all arrive at that Pearly Gate
(and we'll all get there, though some of us late)
Yes, when we depart this world -- when we croak,
St. Peter will ask us: "Did you get the joke?"

--meganthemegan 6/17/2005

On gratitude...

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John F. Kennedy

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Jacques Maritain

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kindness that stands behind the action.
Albert Schweitzer

Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
Leroy [Satchel] Paige

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
William Arthur Ward

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhardt

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.
Lionel Hampton

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer

On voting...

And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

---

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.
-- Dan Quayle

---

I VOTE FOR YOU FOR GOD

When your eyes have found the strength
To constantly speak to the world
All that is most dear
To your own
Life,

When your hands, feet, and tongue
Can perform in that rare unison
That comforts this longing earth
With the knowledge

Your soul,
Your soul has been groomed
In His city of love;

And when you can make others laugh
With jokes
That belittle no one
And your words always unite,

Hafiz
Does vote for you.

Hafiz will vote for you to be
The minister of every country in
This universe.

Hafiz does vote for you my dear.
I vote for you
To be
God.

Hafiz (Persian poet c. 1320-1389) translated by Daniel Ladinsky

On birthdays and growing older...

Granted, I'm prejudiced, but my son is one of my very favorite people and I love him muchly. As his 26th birthday is coming up next Wednesday, I've been pondering how much I appreciate his integrity and refusal to take anything at face value, how much I admire the way he overcame some big life challenges, and how I REALLY love his sense of humor. And yes, I tripped down memory lane and found some excerpts from his 1993 Mother's Day coupon book, titled "Watch out America -- We're Hippies Raising Teenagers: Trends of the '60s I Swear not to Follow":
"Levitating (or trying to levitate) Government Buildings"
"Blaming everything bad in life on LBJ: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT AWAY WITH THIS IN THE 60's!!!"
"Love-Ins: I swear not to take illegal drugs from people named "Moonbeam" or "Shine" or dance naked to no music and have sex with complete strangers claiming all this is 'helping stop a war'"
"Listening to Folk Singing: Thousands of modern teenagers would have admired your generation if you wouldn't have listened to such annoying music. Joan Baez????"
So, Happy Birthday, Forrest, and here's someone (not Joan Baez) singing a song by Bob Dylan:
Forever Young
...and various words on growing older and wiser:
**************
It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.--e.e.cummings
*************
Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
*************
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. --Doug Larson
*************
Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. --Unknown
*************
At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?
--Jules Feiffer
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All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old who are strong do not whither.
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.
--J.R.R. Tolkein
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Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
--Mark Twain
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Teshuva*

Teshuva*

If weeping were the thing could tender us
we would by now be soft and clear.
Or if rage could bring us round, those storms
would hold us north, and keep us sure.

With every fresh assault our futile tears
run rivers in familiar groove.
But drying salt is hard. Too sharp and strong -
the crystal's fixed; We do not move.

Where only love will serve, the sun in flow,
our need is greatest to be kind.
One way we have not set our faces -- we turn
toward Light, and turning, shine.

--Jeanne Lohmann, Quaker

* The turning to God in Hasidic teaching

Footprints in the Sand (Revised)

Footprints in the Sand (Revised)

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed
he was walking along the beach with God.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of
footprints in the sand: one belonging
to him, and the other to God.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of
his life there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very
lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he
questioned God about it:

"God, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me."

God replied:

"You know, there are other people in the world
that needed me besides you, and frankly,
I could have used a little help!
Where the hell were you?"

The Holy Longing (Goethe)

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On dealing with sadness...

So much sadness...some words from one of my favorite poets:

*********************************************************

Now is the Time


Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

Hafiz (Persian poet c. 1320-1389) translated by Daniel Ladinsky

On love...

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.
-- Rumi

---

One type of love may involve the two partners in each projecting an image upon the other: an image of what the loved object should be like. It may be the image that has come from their own father or mother or from some dream idyll. Having projected this image upon the partner, they then proceed to focus their love upon the image. The image may have little or no relation to the real person of the other; in fact, it may even threaten to strangle, to smother, and even to destroy the true life of the partner…Then, when the struggle for integrity fails and the projected image prevails, neither can be present to the other except in this disguise.
A higher love is two solitudes that protect and touch and greet each other. Each is willing to drop, or at least lower, the projected image and to feel an increasing sense of responsibility that the other should fulfill the mysterious destiny that God has hidden within him whether this shatters the image or not. Each counts it an infinite blessing to be able to live in the presence of the other and to be forever surprised by the joy of seeing the other grow from the deepest inner vision that is hidden in him.
-- Douglas V. Steere (Quaker philosopher) "On Being Present Where You Are"

---

Why should we two ever want to part?
Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water,
we live as the great one and the little one.
As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,
we live as the great one and the little one.
This love between us goes back to the first humans;
it cannot be annihilated.
Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the ocean,
what is inside me moved inside you.
-- Kabir

---

Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions...
-- Woody Allen

---

Men are from earth; women are from earth. Deal with it.
--Unknown

---

"Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!"
-- Homer Simpson

George Bush "thinks about Iraq every day"

...I am so glad to hear that. I'm sure the families of these fallen soldiers think about Iraq every day also>>>>In Memoriam

That's the day I realized (American Beauty)

...that's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things,
and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know
there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

My Lord God (Thomas Merton)

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

On difficult times...

Remember, don't get even, get odd.

---

A young woman once asked an old woman,
"What is life's heaviest burden?"
And the old woman replied,
"To have nothing to carry."

---

Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, one knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. One can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Pure love and prayer are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
--Thomas Merton

---

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
--Mark Twain

---

I made some studies, and
Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in
touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle
I found it too confining.
It was just too needful;
It expected me to be there for it all the time, and with all
I have to do --
I had to let something go.
-- Jane Wagner