spring

Education is...a drawing out of one’s own genius, nature, and heart. The manifestation of one’s essence, the unfolding of one’s capacities, the revelation of one’s heretofore hidden possibilities... From another side, study amplifies the speech and song of the world so that it’s more palpably present.

Education in the soul leads to the enchantment of the world and the attunement of self.

There are always two poems—the one you want to write and the other that must write itself.

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure...and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative...

Let us sing to the Creator of the cosmos,
to the divine power of love!
When we look at the wondrous display
of the heavens,
at the Earth with its infinite
variety of life,
Who are we that You love us, that You
rejoice in our being;
that You trust us to care for creation
in all its splendor,
inviting us to become co-creators
with You?
Let us celebrate the mystery of life!
Let us commit our lives to
the Divine Plan!

The spring is back. The earth is like a child
who’s learnt a heap of poems off by heart:
so many of them, and how hard she toiled!
But she wins prizes now; she has them pat.

At school, her teacher was a strict old man,
although we liked the whiteness of his beard.
Now, when we ask her please to give a name
to colours green or blue, she knows the word!

Earth, you’re in luck; today’s a holiday.
We children want to catch you; come and play.
Whoever laughs the most will win the game.

It does not cost much. It is pleasant: one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with peace, and the house filled with one of the world's sweetest smells. But it takes a lot of time. If you can find that, the rest is easy. And if you cannot rightly find it, make it, for probably there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.

An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.

The cosmos dreams in me
while I wait in stillness,
ready to lean a little further
into the heart of the Holy.

I, a little blip of life,
a wisp of unassuming love,
a quickly passing breeze,
come once more into Lent.

No need to sign me
with the black bleeding ash
of palms, fried and baked.
I know my humus place.

This Lent I will sail
on the graced wings of desire,
yearning to go deeper
to the place where
I am one in the One.

Oh, may I go there soon,

What would it be like to surrender to Mystery? What would it be like to slow down, to stop trying to fix the world for ourselves, for our grandchildren, and for all the creatures of this planet, and instead take their hands, and the hands of our ancestors, and the hands of our great great grandchildren, and with fierce love make a path by walking it?