And Yet

You can’t put weight on what’s falling,

can’t stomp your foot, can’t hope

to knock the bottom out and so fall through —

there’s no salvation in destruction

however much you’re longing

for some easier way to get out

And yet …

And yet …

Every honest step, every searching step,

every anguished and exhausted step,

regardless of directionality

will take you closer

to the amnesty you seek

We live in the field of absolute value

where you can’t take a negative step —

what’s upside down will be inverted,

what’s right side up will be purified

Don’t worry —

this is not dependent

on your will and prowess,

this is Truth

unfolding effortless in grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 20, 2018 

The Daily Vote

I will vote for the strength of being,

vote for the light

and not what covers it,

not what tries to cordon off and own it,

looming large with rules

for how, when, and for whom

it needs to shine

I will vote for the heart’s whisper

within each one of us

which tells us, contradicting roles and rules,

just what we are

We won’t be overthrown

for there is no power

outside the seed within,

no power but that which calls it forth.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 4, 2018

Travail

Every moment is a woman in travail
pregnant with its holy purpose,
every moment can bring forth
bright acclamation of abundant goodness

Though on the edge, the lie may lurk,
ready to snatch, to scorn, to judge,
ready to spin the story into something selfish, vile,
it cannot win.

Each child is caught up to God.
Each impulse of Life is pure
and must be seen that way.
The kingdom is at hand
to catch them up with joy,
to shelter them and celebrate their being,
each moment is delivered into Truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 28, 2017

The Nature of the Blessing

While some are struggling

to be alive, others

are struggling to be real

It is the same struggle —

though it may seem poles apart,

it is the same need

And while some may envy others their ease,

and others may not know to envy

the vitality that rises from the quick

when the cut is close to the bone

In the end they will be saved

in the same flood of light.

It may even feel to them

like they saved each other.

This is the nature of the blessing.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 3, 2018

Imagine

What if we discovered

we’d been, all this time,

strung up in nets,

our juices harnessed

to do things we would always sense

were sideways to our desires,

so that we felt the shadow

of regret, of disappointment

dogging our every act

If we should learn

this is not our purpose,

this is not our true companion –

we are not designed

to do things that always

cause somebody pain

If we could feel

our energies released

from those old nets,

slipping through like bars of light,

gaining strength and brightness

with their freedom

What joy, what power

we would wield! slicing away

everything unmerciful, unkind,

gathering the clan of all of us

into our rightful, foreordained design.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 7, 2017

The Violence of Conformity

As we start to escape

the violence of conformity,

we owe much to those

who first spoke out,

who wouldn’t call it courage

because it was desperation,

because it was the only option

besides soul-death,

because something deeper down

that instinct for survival

(or maybe that’s exactly what it was)

forced them to stand up,

howl out their truth

Who will witness this?

and who will turn

from the smooth and lethal cruelty

that calls itself normality?

Who will sprout up

in the wild, every-which-way

tumbling burgeoning

self proclamation of life?

©Wendy Mulhern

August 9, 2017

Escaping White Privilege

I’m tired of looking

round and round

in this prescribed place

of acceptability —

I’ve searched every corner

and some of what I want and need

is missing

And though I’ve been told

that my partition

is the one most everyone

wishes they were born in,

I’m not so sure

I’m thinking

I need to get out of here,

even if it means

giving up the stuff I’m told

others would most envy

I have a notion kindness

may be my ticket,

so I will prize it

and seek out every chance

to exercise it

I will build up the core

of my kindness

until it can do

all kinds of acrobatic things

or at least till it reaches

over the divide.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 22, 2017

Greater Good

Tempted to throw myself

into the sea again,

feeling the waters

behind my eyes

wanting to join

the seething ebb and flow —

I remind them that this is not

inevitable,

they would only be lost,

as would I,

by taking such a dive

There is a place for me

here at the helm of thought,

making the subtle distinctions

of perception,

ready with the course corrections

that will keep my ship from foundering

and deliver my proof

of the power of the higher Mind

for the greater good.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 3, 2017

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

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

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

Waking

Am I, even still, in deep dream?

Or am I slowly waking?

is it possible all this could be

just what it seems,

or are we long mistaken?

My fumbling hands try to determine

what is freedom here, and what is chains.

I find I’m bound by what I thought was comfort,

I find I’m freed by my internal reins

And what may seem a heaving shift of landscape

may be the rift of an illusive scene,

and what may seem a fearful theft of power

may lift us up to finer, lucid being —

to grasp and taste the source of true delight:

illumining the universe with light.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 8, 2017

New Growth

As old containers fall away,

we each may find

we’re more cohesive

than we knew,

and now, no longer blocked off

from the places where

we always longed to grow,

we’ll send our shoots out

bold and green

We’ll be so much more wild and thick

than how we had been told

we had to be,

we’ll twine with others

who had been forbidden,

we’ll make a thicket, a collective tree

And we’ll hold ourselves together

not by rules and condemnation,

but by the gracious tendrils of our truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 5, 2017

Daily Life

Well, we want to just keep

living our lives,

but the problem is

a little more light

has made us lose the illusion,

and we can’t quite conjure it up

And what we thought were

the solid pillars upon which

our lives rested,

are not even there —

we’re still standing on something

but we don’t know what.

What we thought was true —

very little of it is still relevant 

(this comes, we find,

as a relief in many ways)

And we realize we still want 

to get on with learning and growing, 

which will still be possible,

even if all the landmarks have changed.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 30, 2017

Deconstruction

The whole story begins to rip

like a wet paper bag,

contents pushing through the corners

We have been so far

from where we belong,

so removed

from what we’re meant to be,

bundled away in this dark sack

wrapped up in our separate packages

But here’s the rain

and here’s a soggy mess,

and here in streaked glimpses

we see some light

We will get out of here somehow

and lift our faces to the rain

and sing and sing

and dance and dance.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 26, 2017