News Flash

We are not passengers —

we are the horse

We are the ones running

and each of us can feel

the surprise touch,

each of us can be awakened

from our sense of waiting

for someone else to do the miracle

so we can cheer

We already are the miracle,

we already are the shining

of Love’s children —

look at us

I mean look at yourself

on the inside

You’ll see it, that chain of light

all laced through you,

the one you fight for every day,

the one you live for

We are the miracle

and nothing stops us

from running through to claim it.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 30, 2017

Pray for us

Pray for us —

we acknowledge we are lost

and all the tools we normally would use

are overwhelmed

by current inundations

Pray for us —

we don’t believe that any simple help

from people, though their efforts 

may be great,

can reach the need 

we flounder in right now

Pray for us —

if we are to be saved

it has to be by something

that can’t go down with darkness,

something with enough light

to startle us awake from nightmares

Something that knows

the buoyant truth of us

was never buried

and will outshine

all the terror, loss, and pain.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 29, 2017

“Like a tree planted by the rivers"

Well, who wouldn’t delight

in the law of Life, in the law of light?

Who doesn’t thrill

with the intricacy of every interlocking need,

each interlacing gift?

Who wouldn’t be amazed 

at how perfectly 

all these separate entities

flock and soar together,

turn and breathe as one?

From here comes the courage

to leave behind the old story,

that’s based on conflict

and has to have an enemy

and makes its horrid bargains

and insists on being right

There’s plenty of evidence

for the goodness of everything.

It may not make a good story,

but it makes a good life.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 28, 2017

Yoked

(in contemplation of thirty-five years)

These days you and I

move forward in easy step,

our common yoke our common dream

we lean into together

The unutterable magnitude

of our aspiration

leaves us often in silence,

or we talk of tasks and plans

as if those were the sum of our engagement

But our hope, laced far too often

with the fear we will not speak

binds us more deeply

than years, than memories —

in some moments we may fathom

we are closer than as one

our life together

less choice than destiny.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 26, 2017

Strings

I come again to feel the need

for that gentle lift

along the strings of my being,

straightening essential lines,

untangling the twists

and places things have fallen

topsy turvy

I need to feel the breath of light

that courses through the strings,

that gives them strength and vibrancy

and sets them in alignment

This is the love touch I desire —

the one that knows the order

of all the threads of me,

the one that sees me whole

and sets me there, lit up from within,

clear channeled, free.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 24, 2017

Self Shine

One day you find yourself held

in the shine that lets you 

be as you envisioned you could be,

suddenly strong enough to wield

the needed tools, precision locked in,

clarity of mind

In a rush, you are riding a wave —

the power of you, bearing you up,

the surge of joy, to be so carried

as if it were a force outside yourself

delivering this lift

You will seek this shine again.

You will look for places 

where it might happen,

seek out the people

who witnessed it with you,

come back to tasks which,

in doing them, you felt it —

It may not be easy to find,

but knowing it’s there,

you’ll keep looking.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 23, 2017

To My Former Self

Be forewarned —

the work will change you,

you will not keep the quick 

conclusions, the know-it-all opinions,

the glib solutions

that brought you, eager, to the job

You will use your mind

but not in the way you imagined —

there will be great gaps

in what you understand, 

you will have to start from nothing, 

again and again

Patience will be your best tool,

patience and perseverance

and enough inner silence

to hear what the task suggests

Your body will learn to keep going —

give it permission to work hard

and a way to get warm at day’s end,

it will rise to the occasion, 

and serve you well

and be your friend.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 22, 2017

Work Clothes

I will clothe myself

in honest work, in steady initiative,

I will clothe myself in hopefulness

and in an open mind,

I will wear clarity of thought

so I will see present solutions

to each small challenge

that the work presents

And if this garb

is deemed unworthy,

I will wait to see

what else is needed,

what inner strength, what outer grace,

what patience, what forgiveness,

what place where I can laugh from

and whatever other qualities present themselves to me

to help me get the job done.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 21, 2017

Reassessing

And if it turns out

the rules we’ve been playing by

are not the real ones,

if it turns out

the object of the game

is not what we thought

and all our cheering on

and all our disappointments

all this time

have been askew

from how the actual score was counted

We may find

we still have made

progress we weren’t noticing —

skills attained, if faultily employed,

and gains that came 

from bringing our best efforts

to what we thought, till now,

had been the game

And then we’ll have a new focus,

and then the way we move will change

as we employ a more attuned alignment

and stretch into our fuller range.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 20, 2017

Arriving

Dozing into the arrival

at our land, passing between

cliffs of clouds and blue banked sky,

needed desired rain

and needed desired sun

and the question of which

would attend our arrival

Eyes closed, the landscape still rolled out,

the narration borrowed

from some other world:

“They grasped each other 

by their suppositions,”

I heard, before opening my eyes

The sun shone through the rain,

mist rose up from the road

and blew across. The dream

was also worth watching

after the long trundle,

blurring the question

of where, exactly,

we were arriving.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 18, 2017

The Space Between

The breath between the notes of a flute –

a time to consider

the nature of the spaces

where nothing has been said

And if I need a way to know

the purity of tone,

perhaps it lies in this —

not in the mellifluity of words

but in the calmness

and the listening

of the space between.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 17, 2017

Conversation

I heard without a doubt

(my Creator told me

clear as the blue shine on the floor

stretching to the boundaries

of all my being)

I heard without a doubt

that at the very bottom of my tears

there was nothing there but goodness

Why then, was I still afraid?

Did I still believe my life rolled out

in some realm other than

the one my Maker owned?

Did I think I might be comforted

but not healed? Saved but left alone?

Surely (my Creator told me

this morning as I watched the tiny

crescent moon start its traverse

across the brightening sky)

Surely you couldn’t think

I’d leave you in a realm I didn’t govern!

Surely you can feel: It’s not

that I deliver you from evil

so much as that my all-present goodness

always governs all events —

Yours, too. Yourself, your family

and every fact unfolding in this day.

And that’s why, in my goodness,

you don’t have to be afraid.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 16, 2017

Faustian Bargain

You need no faustian bargain.

All the gifts you ever have desired

are yours immutably, 

before time, perhaps before embodiment,

in full force still.

You can claim them

without a catch, without a price

They all are yours to give,

and, in giving, yours to bless.

In blessing, you are blessed,

along the circle leading back to your desire,

continuing and ever new,

as it is written,

as it will ever be.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 15, 2017

Sense of Self

For awhile, it’s important

to get our stories straight,

to open out the crushed frames

to let the wind and light

flow through our sense of self

Later, as the light grows stronger,

the particular grids of our stories

become less relevant,

overwhelmed, as they are,

by what streams through the spaces

as we shift our sense of self

away from the lines

into the brightness of being.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 13, 2017

Life Essence

You may think

you want to go back

to the old life, the quid pro quo,

your place along the grid

of fear and confidence,

the little pleasures

in what you overcome

But once you’ve grasped the brilliant core,

there’s no hope for it —

that light will burn right through

all the warp and weft 

of what you thought you were

They can’t hold it —

you have to find the structure

made out of the same stuff,

a practice that embraces it

and lets it shine.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 11, 2017

Receive This

You speak of receiving: 

Receive this — you are beloved.

Spirit is not indifferent

to your being. You are as prized

as Spirit is to itself —

breath of being,

delight and excitement

in this present living of you,

exactly you.

Spirit is not indifferent

to that which shines its essence.

It can’t forsake you

anymore than you

could forsake your breath.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 10, 2017