Joy is an act of Bravery

Making peace with the world is an ongoing pursuit.

It is a battle of understanding. Denial pushes pain from consciousness, but only truth can transform the hurt into love for everything.

As I hold my pain in my arms, I feel the warm hum of the earth as love grows through my pain, like flowers find their way through cracked sidewalks.

And now, every person I meet, I see with new eyes- with new understanding; with deeper listening to their silent struggle- to remain at peace with life, at peace with themselves.

When we lie, the lie is more poisonous to ourselves than anyone; when we betray others, we so much more betray ourselves. Peace must be made between the places within oneself that, self-inflicted, have been torn apart.

The soul begs, go and listen deeper, and wake up.

Truth surrounds us and seeps into our false beliefs, our false defenses, and gently strips away our misconceptions.

This, it speaks softly, is your true self. No seperation between self and other. All beings, all atoms, visible and not, are interwoven into one Ecosystem- the Allness, the soul of life.

When we practice deep understanding, there is no need to forgive. We begin to see that all beings create goodness as well as they’re able, as well as they can understand at a time. All beings respond to goodness the same way, moving toward it like moths to light.

Healing comes rushing in when we wake up from our hibernation of solitude, and breathe deeper, filling unused parts of the lungs, the whole body reconnecting at last.

We are all awakening to the same familiar struggle- the longing, the need that never dies-we are one community, and the only pain is caused by separation.

For Bri and Aaron on thier Wedding Day

See how our lives get mixed up like different playdough colors mashed together. Can you separate them, make them as they were before? The colors have affected each other.

Our lives blend together like compatible ideas and they spread
around us, surround us. Can you remove an idea once you have heard it? The way you see the world is permanently altered.

we live every single day together,
and though we have known each other only a small portion of our lives, we have sworn
everything
to each other.

we have leapt into something so ordinary and yet so
bizarre,

together-

we felt we were risking something but were not sure what.

Silently, the gravity of the vows we spoke
have become something invisible, unstoppable.
Growing in size and velocity with each conflict and each kiss.

Marriage, when it is good, is to simultaneously
nurture your Self and
lose your self
into a cooperation
which you have longed for.

To care for another person's dreams and sorrows
as much as you do your own.

We did not say our vows lightly,
but we could not have seen where they would take us, where they have yet to take us.

Solstice letting go

Tula,
You were predicted to be born two days from today.

I'm so sorry, if I could have done anything to keep you
in this world, I would have.
Your leave shocked me, shook my soul with grief
And I saw clearly
that I am not in control-
not of what happens in my body,
nor what happens in the wide world around me.

Today, as I hold in my heart
the memory of your life, felt only by me,
I feel the new baby kick
and know
life is not perfect,
there is no Grand Reason.
There is only continuation of life,
as far as we can see-
life crumbling and being remade.

Inexorable life, larger and wider than we can ever know.
No joy is stolen forever,
no death can silence the living world.

Nest

The city where I have lived all my life
has been shaken to rubble.
From behind a broken edifice, an old man with only one eye calls to me.
His voice is like the ragged peace of an old love, he speaks-
"When nothing is certain,
everything is possible".

The towers that have stood above me for as long as I have lived
are broken at my feet,
I must climb over and around
the massive pieces of fallen concrete,
splintered wood, and broken glass;
a clumsy collage of chaos.

And in the nine months since the earth
shook my city to the ground,
life has continued it’s rhythmic chant
of grow, grow, grow.

Vines have stretched their arms and climbed up the sleeping wreckage of history,
adorning the cracked village with green, flowering life.

Grow, grow, grow.

Above my head, a little bird is weaving its nest in an old window pane.
Meticulously, she twists bits and pieces of what has fallen
into a delicate bed.

I am like her,
keeping pieces of what has broken,
and building my new life-
beautiful, intricate, strong.

junkyard

I am searching through the junkyard of my life
salvaging pieces of colorful glass and beautiful
dirty things and useful wasted things in order to
begin
something new;

to reawaken the sleeping hoper,
to raise as from the dead
the girl within me who wanted only to hold
All the world in her arms in safety;

Child within me you are safe again
I Am stronger now, I can face the Past
and lift my face to the stars and believe
in the goodness, and trust in the kindness and
be

Open hearted-

wounded places still tender but happy to be useful again;
Oh WORLD of possibilities
hold me near your ancient truth!

song of the rain

I want to see it rolling off the tips
of everything,
pulling your hair earthward.

Crowds scurry for shelter,
but I love the ones who make their peace with it.
Who allow me to bless them,
sprinkling seas and rivers of the world
over their sweet faces.

And in the hot stretches of July days,
I long for children who crouch
and dip two hands in cold
puddles;

And for the smell of the earth
when rain bends leaves
and feeds the soil to its deepest root.

I bring all that is green and fat,
all that is clean and pure.
When I come in a rush,
let me baptize you.

the Vibration

I think perhaps I am dreaming right now,
The story changes it shape
It curls until it has flipped over

The paths before me turn to water

I do not recognize this life,
Save for a few key characters
And the sound of my own voice

Newness

I know it is holy
I feel it

And still I get lost here,
The million bleary memories seem more real to me than this,
This day and this hour
of complete joy.

Joy which is complete as a protein is complete
Atomic assimilation of joy into my chromosomes
Of thank you of darling of how beautiful and Yes

Come closer to me
the crest of all this hoping
is upon me-
I have been reaching
Stretching to pain
For this

For the reconciling of all I have loved and lost
Into one
steady
Rhythm