Leave Taking

I leave you

in the hands of Love,

I trust Love’s knowing of you

to be the one most satisfying thing

I can imagine for you

I leave you

in the hands of Truth, knowing

there is no other source

of what you are,

and it establishes you

in dimensions I can’t even start

to fathom

Life holds you

in the comprehensive grace

that marks each one of its creations,

I leave you 

knowing

you are never left alone.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 31, 2016

Vessel by Jennifer McCurdy, photo by Josh Liebowitz

It is Enough

It is enough

if each day

you walk a few steps

companioned

by holy light, if your eyes

bask in the presence

of elemental being,

its truth settling you

in your quiet center.

There’s no need to rush about

or push yourself to do so —

simply being here

is enough.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 29, 2016

Tending Fire

Ah, heat! The fire teaches us

it is the release

of all that we have gathered

that warms us, and warms others

In the provision

of what the fire requires,

I recognize my corresponding needs:

enough air and enough proximity

to hold the heat within the burning core

The satisfaction

of the steady flame

responding to my nudging

lends a glow to heart,

hearth, earth, home.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 28, 2016

vessel by Jennifer McCurdy, photo by Gary Mirando

Take Heart

Don’t be afraid —

There is no journey you can take,

no long night you can go through

where you will be abandoned

in the middle

In your tiredest moment,

at the coldest hour,

in the bleakest outlook,

the most untoward turn,

hear your heart:

it doesn’t beat alone.

It pulses in response

to the eternal pulse of being,

indicating, thus, its steady presence

You will come through,

but you may feel at peace

before you’re even done,

for in each step

you are attended by the One.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 27, 2016

Awake

Across the street,

I see an upper window,

across the day a light,

a leap of concord,

a resonance of consciousness,

a sense of presence,

signal of life, though no one can be seen

Within each dwelling, everywhere I look,

I feel the power,

for any one of us can transform everything.

The calm insistence on the truth

of our infinity

blows out the whole illusion

of our chains.

I see you, indeed I see you!

The great wakening is here

and we will move, astonished,

from the cruel story

into the clear.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 26, 2016

No Lie

Don’t be overwhelmed

by the size of the lie,

how comprehensive it has been,

how many generations

it has taken in

Far more impressive

is the size of truth,

and its solidity, and its

dependability,

and the fact that,

right now, it is establishing itself

and we are seeing

the lie falling away,

all of it —

It all must go,

and its purported consequences

can leave no mark

on the grand display of being,

never bring one light

down from the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 25, 2016

Going Home

We’re all trying to go home.

The flailing stumbling is part of it,

the bold euphoric leaps are, too,

as is the boisterous chatter

and the quiet yearning,

as are the careful plans

and the impulsive searching

We’re all trying to be home,

and we will find it,

because it isn’t far

from every one of us,

for in home

we live and move and have our being.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2016

Winter

Winter is not finished.

Perhaps it has not even begun —

it paces wide fields, pauses

in wooded corners,

turns with an abrupt flourish

of long, dark cloak,

releasing torrents — wind and rain,

maybe even snow

Head down, it broods,

and now and then

lifts blazing eyes

to meet your gaze,

to draw you in. 

©Wendy Mulhern

January 22, 2016

Rags

In this threadbare place

where I can no longer settle

for the flimsy garments

of my past, fake life,

for the oppressive garb

of my appointed station

Where I have yet to find

the robes of power and of justice

(though I have dreamed them

oh so many times)

I stand in rags

but not for long

The force that makes me,

that places me at rest,

possessing a prodigious energy

I’ve yet to tap,

that gives me everything I’ve ever been

and all I am to be,

that grants deep decency to all,

will clothe me, too.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 21, 2016

Sovereignty

(or how to heal the world)

There is no grid of time or space

through which we move,

tracked along the x axis

through the highs and lows

of daily random y’s

These lines bend at our will,

we hold them, gathered,

in our hands,

we roll them out 

through all the planes of consciousness —

they move at our command

We are not in the world, rather,

the world is in us,

so in the steadying of ourselves,

we steady it —

we calm it, reassure it, and set it

gently on its course.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 20, 2016

Fallen

Having fallen from the story

(like a lost glove, in the rain,

the present sodden reality

seeping unmistakably in)

I find I am no longer concerned

with what will happen

in that white paper world

that knows no wetness

And I sense the presence 

of others. Ah! There is a heart bond

in this shared element. We see

it doesn’t matter what you fell from.

It never really mattered,

even up there. Down here

we instinctively reach for each other.

We bind each other up

We open all our senses

(many that we never knew we had)

to take in the nuances

of this emerging truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 19, 2016

No Worries

Here is how I let go

of the string of worry,

here is how I keep it

from pulling me sideways,

from making me say things 

(in my resultant wobbliness)

that make the air tense between us:

I let go by remembering

no one has ever soared

with worry on her wings,

and if we lived by worry

we couldn’t move at all

We are in Mind

and nowhere else,

and Mind knows us balanced,

and Mind designs all the spaces —

the flow of us,

the cushioning air,

the trail and all the riders on it,

and their balance and their thoughts.

It’s the nature of Mind

to be harmony — we are all expressions

of one grand idea.

We can’t fall out of it,

so we can’t crash. So there’s no place

for worry here.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 18, 2016

Inner Voice

Truth is,

you need to trust

your inner ear,

your source of balance,

your intonation,

and no attempts to balance you

from over here

can be of any use. I need to trust

that you will calibrate

and find your finest tuning

on your own

Truth is,

I need to trust

my inner voice

and not let it be silenced

by reasons formed somewhere outside

the center of my being —

by my mistrusts, or by concerns

of others, or second-guessing

how its counsel is perceived.

I need to hone its clarity

by listening and following

and holding true,

even if I’m not sure why I do.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 17, 2016

Reconciling

Still longing for

the completed circuit,

the gathering of everything,

the fulfilled promise,

putting it all to bed

at end of day

Longing for that,

even as the greater light

begins to rise,

providing higher resolution,

where the dearly held

dream of reconciliation

is subsumed

by the fact of oneness.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 15, 2016

Beans

This smoothing truth

silences the petty bean counter

who tallies wrongs

and weighs the price

of full forgiveness

It spills the beans

(shiny and hard, 

skidding and bouncing) —

they roll off to find

their ground, their soil,

their splitting and swelling

and becoming

And as for us —

this truth counts us whole,

counts us in.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 14, 2016

Thaw

When you let go,

your laughter is so gentle,

and the unforgiving angles

cease to jab at me

and strain at us

I can rest easy

in the suppleness

of thought suffused

with the powerful melting force

of love, of soft surrender,

enabling flow and sweet intermingling

as we ripple and tumble 

into clarity.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 13, 2016