Coming Out

I am gay.  I am straight.  I am lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender.

I am a man, I am a woman, and everything in-between.

I am a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim,

a Sikh, a humanist, a pagan, a Satanist.

I am an agnostic, an atheist, a nihilist, a dualist

and a non-dualist, a believer, a non-believer.

I am the space for laughter, tears, agony and ecstasy, the most ecstatic bliss

and the most profound heartbreak, despair and disillusionment.

I am the space for the wonderful dreams, 

the terrible nightmares, memories, visions and the most creative

manifestations of light.

All thoughts, all stories, all concepts, all sensations, all possible

feelings, human and animal, vegetable and mineral,

pass through me, arise out of me, 

and fall back into me.

I am Consciousness itself.  I am what you are.

I am coming out as Love.

Jeff Foster

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me".

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with the full moon in each eye

that is always saying, 

with that sweet moon language, 

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear? 

Hafiz

when you love

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body.

His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, 

vanishes.

He is rich and sweet and right.

He is part of the world, the atmosphere,

the blue sky and the blue water.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Third Body

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they 

do not long at this moment to be older, or

younger, nor born in any other nation, or time, or

place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or

not talking.  Their breaths together feed someone

whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move; he sees

her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body they have in common.

They have made a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will

come.

A man and woman sit near each other; as they 

breathe they feed someone we do not know,

someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

Robert Bly

Beyond Measure

You are flawed,

you are stuck in old patterns,

you become carried away

with yourself. 

Indeed you are quite impossible

in many ways.

And still, you are beautiful 

beyond measure.

John Welwood

Photo:   Peter Bowers

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

to regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

to behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

of any misery in the sound of the wind, 

In the sound of a few leaves, 

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

Wallace Stevens

Photo:  Peter Bowers

laughter and tears

"I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes; nor would I be content with converting my tears, invited by my agonized self, into calm.
It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter.
Tears that purify my heart and reveal to me the secret of life and its mystery,
Laughter that brings me closer to my fellow men;
Tears with which I join the broken-hearted,
Laughter that symbolizes joy over my very existence."




Kahlil Gibrain
Photo:  via love is infinite 

You suppose...

You suppose you are the trouble.

But you are the cure.

You suppose you are the lock on the door.

But you are the key that opens it. 

It's too bad that you want to be someone else.

You don't see your own face,
your own beauty.
Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.  

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

life

Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, 

but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, 

in it, through it, and by it. 

Henry Miller

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Now

There exists only the present instant...a Now which always and

without end is itself new. 

There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a

 thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.


Meister Eckhart

seeing

Not "Revelation" - 'tis - that waits, 

But our unfurnished eyes -  

Emily Dickinson

Photo:  Peter Bowers

being to timelessness as it's to time

being to timelessness as it's to time,

love did no more begin than love will end; 

where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim

love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities 

proudly descending put on deathful flesh:

are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's

a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,

the hope which has no opposite in fear;

the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:

the truth more first than sun more last than star

-do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.

Whatever sages say and fools,all's well

e.e. cummings 

photo:  Peter Bowers