Come to the Orchard in Spring

Come to the orchard in Spring.

There is light and wine, and sweethearts

in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.

If you do come, these do not matter.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the alter of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Waves of desire I am shore to 

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

my medicine

When the wind blows

that is my medicine

When it rains

that is my medicine

When it hails

that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm

that is my medicine

Holy Woman Poem

Photo:  Peter Bowers

being lived

And yet, though we strain against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.  

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting 

inside them,

like an unplayed melody

in a flute?

Is it winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers

interweaving their fragrances,

or streets 

as they wind through time...

Rainer Maria Rilke

singing

I  believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning, 

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo:  Peter Bowers

First hand

At some point you will have put down the words down.

Put the maps down.

Close the sacred books.

Look up.

Stop being enthralled by the journeys

of your spiritual heroes

At some point, you will have to get up,

open your door and walk out into the 

sunlight of your Being and feel its light and 

its warmth on your own skin.

Firsthand.

No longer satisfied by catching a glimpse of it

through the windows of another's experience;

but stand in its full and glorious light,

naked and vulnerable and

in holy surrender with the story of your life

with all its twists and turns and tortured tales

lying pink and belly-up under the dome

of the disinterested sky:

with thanks to:

Wonder, silence, gratitude