A poem by Mary Oliver which celebrates life in death
"Love takes off the masks..."
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
How to Tell the Truth by Paul Williams
When you just have to talk,
try being silent.
When you feel reluctant to say anything,
make the effort
to put what you’re feeling into words.
This is a place to begin.
Pushing gently
against the current
of your own impulses
is an effective technique
for dislodging
and discovering
your truth.
How to tell the truth?
Taste it
and remember the taste in your heart.
Risk it
from the bottom of your love.
Take the risk
of telling the truth
about what you’re feeling.
Take the risk
of telling your loved one
your secrets.
It’s true
you might be misunderstood.
Look and see
if you’re willing to trust
yourselves
to misunderstand each other
and go on from there.
When someone speaks to you
and you feel yourself not wanting to hear it
try letting it in.
You don’t have to agree that they’re right.
Just take the risk
of listening as if they could possibly be speaking
some truth—
and see what happens.
Listen as if.
Listen as if you can’t always tell
what the truth is.
Listen as if you might be wrong,
especially when you know you’re right.
Listen as if
you were willing to take the risk
of growing beyond
your righteousness.
Listen as if
love mattered.
Active Hope by Joanna Macy
Active Hope is not wishful thinking.
Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued
by some savior.
Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life
on whose behalf we can act.
We belong to this world.
The web of life is calling us forth at this time.
We’ve come a long way and are here to play our part.
With Active Hope we realize that
there are adventures in store,
strengths to discover, and comrades to link arms with.
Active Hope is a readiness to discover the strengths
in ourselves and in others;
a readiness to discover the reasons for hope
and the occasions for love.
A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts,
our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose,
our own authority, our love for life,
the liveliness of our curiosity,
the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence,
the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead.
None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk.
To hear Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn reflect on this source, you can listen to Episode 57 of our weekly conversation project, Turning Towards Life.
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people..."
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
Just Beyond Yourself by David Whyte
Just beyond
yourself.
It’s where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.
There is a road
always beckoning.
When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon
and deep in
the foundations
of your own
heart
at exactly
the same
time,
that’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.
That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.
That’s how
you know
you have
to go.
That’s
how you know.
Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be.
Love Does That by Meister Eckhart
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
because love does
that.
Love frees.
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Lost by David Wagoner
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-- David Wagoner
"For poems are not words, after all..."
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
"The time will never come that you will reach your idea of maturity..."
“The time will never come that you will reach your idea of maturity. It is an endless process. So whether you feel qualified or not, all you have to do is accept it and do your best with wholeheartedness. Make every possible effort to meet this position with modesty and humility. The position is in a bigger scale than the person you take yourself to be. So set yourself out in the big scale of the world. Before you are conscious of it, your life is deepened by the position. In that way you develop very naturally.”