Walking Free

There isn’t anything you need to do first.

You don’t have to pay a debt,

explain a misstep,

get somebody else to say they’re sorry

You don’t have to go down corridors

of what happened

or why you or someone else

made certain choices,

or what might have happened,

had you chosen different

And you don’t need to fix

a broken system, don’t need to

proclaim its flaws till someone maybe hears,

don’t need to suffer

to prove how wrong it is

The light of you doesn’t require

any of those fuels, nor can any of those things

obscure or snuff it.

You can walk free

in your divinity, your wholeness —

Look up, set your feet, and go.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 28, 2017

Starting Place

Let me go back even now

to that place I discovered

in early morning prayer,

the place that felt like sunrise

beneath a long low cloud bank,

the place where, if I start there,

my hope rises, light and buoyant,

my prospects for the day

stretch out infinite,

my faith is shown to be

not something I must conjure,

but rather my connection,

sure and strong, to all that floods

the early day with light

Let me remember —

when I start there, I don’t need

a regimen of reform:

when I start there,

I have arrived.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 26, 2017

A New Start

In that nightmare world

where we all are graded,

our actions weighed, our choices judged,

where all of us know painfully

we haven’t measured up

to something,

could have done better,

could do still, if only . . . 

In that nightmare world, we think

we might feel better

if we’ve done better

than someone —

we think there’s comfort

in knowing that, at least,

we're not the worst

But we are waking from that world

and look: no one has been any less

than perfect and essential,

no one has been any more than others,

and no one, even us,

has made a trail of sorry choices,

no one has earned misery or loathing

Whole cityscapes of regret

crumble away,

fall and dissolve,

leaving the shining truth

for us to live in.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 25, 2017

Healing the Past

I start my journey back

across the chasm,

all those times of disappointment,

all those hurts, all those dry years,

the places where I felt

I’d need explanations, apologies —

to tell someone the wrongs

that had been done me

I take these steps

and virgin forest

springs up around me,

familiar as something

that’s always been here,

rich with layers and layers

of interacting life.

Where is the desert,

where the wilderness?

How deep my blindness must have been

not to have seen this!

How full the healing truth must be

to bring me home!

©Wendy Mulhern

February 24, 2017

Praying for the Enemy

Anybody can be called back.

The unbreakable cord 

that holds us to ourselves,

to who we really are,

to what we really want,

never lets go

And in this fullness of time,

it begins to make itself known.

The tug may first be felt

in quiet moments, between

the posturing, between the self justification,

between the self delusion

Once it starts asserting itself

there is actually no force

that can stand up to it.

Not willful blindness, not ugliness

of spirit, not power-drunk reflexes

of greedy grabbing

I affirm this cord in each of us.

I affirm it growing strong

and pulling all of us back

to our core love, from which vantage point

there is no more ability

to harm another.

I pray for all of us,

including the ones who need it most.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 23, 2017

Pray for Standing Rock

If everyone learns how to pray,

just because there’s no other recourse,

just because the only way to rise up

is to sink down into the rooted core of truth

If everyone learns how to pray

just because all other power

has been stripped from us,

that may be the way that we prevail

Prayer will rise like tides, like floods

and change everything —

our sense of self, community, 

and landscape,

prayer will render other powers

irrelevant

as it sweeps through us. You’ll see.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 22, 2017

The Dance

Hand to hand

and gaze to gaze

we look to find our truest ways

We try on clothes,

we try on moves,

we try to find a self that grooves,

we want to lift and float and fly,

break through the stiff and staid and dry

We want the space to give consent,

we want to be uniquely met,

not image to image

but soul to soul —

so shall we see each other whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 21, 2017

Unfoldment

And in the steady walk of days

you might suddenly be able

to move more swiftly,

quickly slipping into

some embodiment of your self

you never had been sure

how you could get to

Life seems so routine, then suddenly.

Grasp this now, for who knows when?

If it’s not here yet, keep on walking.

Time doesn’t own you, so . . . 

The engine of your heart’s desire

is always humming in the background,

purrs or lurches you along whether or not

you’re holding it in mind.

Time doesn’t own you, but it watches —

Your unfoldment is a good show.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 20, 2017

Objection

Pardon me if I’m not fired up

by words of contempt,

however justified its dealers

may feel it is

Makes me want to walk barefoot

in water-sheened sand

and feel my footsteps melt,

and let the words that come to me

in my perplexed objection

be smoothed out as well

There’s no room for love in contempt

and there’s no room for contempt in love

and in the revolution

we’ll need traction,

not the gear grinding slippage

of mutual accusation

But there’s no traction either

for these words of mine —

makes me want to give them up,

and myself as well,

to the leadings of a higher Mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 19, 2017

Happy

Today I woke up happy —

maybe it was the fresh wind

through the night,

or the spring-heralding sound

of many birds,

maybe it was the dreams

that had me tossing

but in the end resolved to power, freedom

Maybe it was the prayer

that stayed with me, deeper than thought

but surfacing, in song and memory,

at my several wakings,

sweeping in the clarity

of how I am held

safe and beloved

in the arms of morning.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 18, 2017

Motivation

How we each got to this place

is actually irrelevant,

as are the stories we have spun

to justify our current situation

What motivated us

is deeper than any of these things,

deeper even than what we thought we wanted,

and even what we knew we needed

What motivates us

has power to overcome

all the particulars

of time and place,

all the ins and outs

of history and reasons

What motivates us

will keep on burning

while all the papers fall away

and in the end, 

beyond all of our roles,

in fearless clarity

it will shine.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 16, 2017

Weather

The weather in mind

is the only weather,

so I am finding, as the rain

pauses after a steady night,

as I consider what atmosphere

will greet the old man

as he emerges

after a night of interrupting

our sleep (and his) many times

with bed changings and redirection

Surface cheer won’t hide

a grumbling interior, nor can

the lack of words, heard or spoken,

prevent the sunshine

of a deep welcome

This is my lesson for today,

which I will take out

into the overcast,

which I will shine into

any dreary places,

which shining

will make my day.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 15, 2017

Harmony

Harmony lives in my house —

This I insist on,

even and especially in

the multicolored movements of thought.

I witness them converging in

towards a small collapse, a place

where disappointment could form

and sadness, where the colors

would dissolve into mud, and

other structures would raise

their mud-encrusted forms

to impose some ugly order —

resentment and its minions

But I will not have it.

Harmony lives in my house,

and the net of generosity

and sweet caring 

keeps the channels open.

We all will get what we need.

We don’t need to demand it

from each other. We all

are harmonized in the One Mind,

who gives us our full fulfillment

and our radiant peace.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 14, 2017

Foretaste of Spring

It’s February

but the yard is fragrant

with sweet box

and small birds are chattering

and the air is balmy

It’s not yet time

to go inside

though our outside tasks

are done —

It’s time to breathe this day

a little longer

while the tops of the fir

and the pine and the cedar

are full of sun.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 13, 2017

Presence Church

We come to this place

where we have agreed

that love is presence —

that if you are here

then you are loved,

and in your love is an expansive blessing,

more than we had dared to hope for.

We understand

there will be healing —

not in the sense of change

but as in coming into wholeness,

recognizing what we’ve always been.

We come to this place as refuge 

from other patterns

that we have used to think about each other.

We put those aside here,

we learn not to use them,

we forget about them entirely,

caught up, as we are —

totally transfixed —

in this way of being love.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 12, 2017