Quotes and Poems

It is a precious and delicate thing, feeling worthy of love 

The echoes of the past blinding us to our true nature

Telling us that we do not belong

That it's safer on the edges of connection 

That the pain of a solo journey is less than the possibility of the truth

That we are not only worthy but made of love 

That we carry the beautiful, ethereal weight of this love in every particle of our being 

May we recall and keep close the memory of this ultimate power 

And let it weave its magic through us and between us, always

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things

“You have traveled too fast over false ground; 
Now your soul has come to take you back. 
 
Take refuge in your senses, open up 
To all the small miracles you rushed through. 
 
Become inclined to watch the way of rain 
When it falls slow and free. 
 
Imitate the habit of twilight, 
Taking time to open the well of color 
That fostered the brightness of day. 
 
Draw alongside the silence of stone 
Until its calmness can claim you.”

For everything under the sun there is a time. 
This is the season of your awkward harvesting, 
When the pain takes you where you would rather not go, 
Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place 
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out; 
And a time when that bitter tree was planted 
That has grown always invisibly beside you 
And whose branches your awakened hands 
Now long to disentangle from your heart. 
You are coming to see how your looking often darkened 
When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love, 
How deep down your eyes were always owned by something 
That faced them through a dark fester of thorns 
Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong; 
You could only see what touched you as already torn. 
Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning. 
And your memory is ready to show you everything, 
Having waited all these years for you to return and know. 
Only you know where the casket of pain is interred. 
You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering 
And according to your readiness, everything will open. 
May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide 
Who can accompany you through the fear and grief 
Until your heart has wept its way to your true self. 
As your tears fall over that wounded place, 
May they wash away your hurt and free your heart. 
May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound 
So that for the first time you can walk away from that place, 
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed, 
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face. 

Most of us live our lives unaware of the depths of existence

Caught in the riptide of a stale current 

The scenery rushing by in a blur

Its beauty anesthetized by the frantic push 

To survive

When all the while 

A voice has been calling

So gentle and quiet 

Easily drowned by the shouting in our mind

Yet if we stop and listen

Its frequency resonating in our chest 

We realize it has been there always 

Our true name on its lips 

Calling us home