listen and watch

Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look 

    up into that blue space?

Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.

And don't worry about what language you use, 

God no doubt understands them all.

Even when the swans are flying north and making 

such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening

    and understanding.

Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.

But isn't the return of spring and how it

springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?

Yes, I know, God's silence never breaks, but is

    that really a problem?

There are thousands of voices, after all.

And furthermore, don't you imagine (I just suggest it)

that the swans know about as much as we do about 

    the whole business?

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly.

Take from it what you can.

Mary Oliver

"Whistling Swans"

Photo: Peter Bowers

community of the spirit

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street,

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

Rumi 

Translation: Coleman Barks 

Photo:  Peter  Bowers