In every season, our mindfulness practices support our inner journey and outer expression. Each week, a poem reflects and enlivens our weekly class themes:

Ways of Being

That Thing You Do (Donna Ashworth)

That thing you do, that thing you’re just good at. The thing that has always drawn you in, from childhood. That thing that has brought you something the rest of the world can’t see. You should do that, much more often. It doesn’t matter if it makes you money, or if anyone else thinks it’s worthwhile. It’s your thing. And every time another adult does their thing again, something in the universe shifts. It’s like pieces of a puzzle that was never supposed to make sense, but was always supposed to just be. You must do your thing again my friend. It matters.

 

 

Flowering (Linda Buckmaster)

At the ruins of the Seven Churches Inishmore

Pick a crevice,
a homey gap
between stones
and make it
your own.

Grow a life here
from wind
rain
and the memories of ancients
embedded in limestone.

The bees will use you
for their sweet honey.
The rock will soften under
your touch.
You will draw moisture from fog
and hold it.
Your presence
will build soil.

This is all we have
in this life
all we own:
a flowering
an opening
a gap between stones
for tiny tender roots.

 

No Measuring Up (Ed Brown)

Now I take the time to peel potatoes,
wash lettuce and boil beets,
to scrub floors, clean sinks, and empty trash.

Absorbed in the everyday,
I find time to unbind, unwind,
to invite the whole body, mind,
breath, thought, and wild impulse to join,
to bask in the task.

No time lost thinking that somewhere else is better.
No time lost imagining getting more elsewhere.
No way to tell this moment does not measure up.
Hand me the spatula: now is the time to taste what is.

 

Ten Thousand Flowers (We-men)

Ten thousand flowers in spring,

the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer,

snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded

by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

 

Winter Poem (Nikki Giovanni)

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly 
still and was a flower

 

Metta Mornings (Daniella Sforza)

We begin again each day

May I be well

May you be well

As the sun rises and sets smiling

In its arc above our earth

Draw it all into your breath

Inspire

We begin again each day

May I be well

May you be well

 

Into the New Year (Danna Faulds)

 

Two gifts will travel with me

into the new year –

divine light and divine love.

Everything else is speculative,

but these two are certainties.

In a world built on chance

and circumstance, divine

light and love occur to me

as beacons. I am grateful

for their company in a life

where questions outnumber

answers by at least three

to one. My intention for

the new year is to notice,

nurture, and share love

and light in as many ways

as I can in my life. I pray

to relax, trust, and breathe

enough to shine.

 

Essential Goodness

Our Fuller Selves (Rupi Kaur)

“we think we are lost while our fuller found and complete selves are somewhere in the future

we get on our hands and knees thinking self-improvement will help us reach them but this finding ourselves [BS] is never going to end

i’m tired of putting off living until i have more information on who i am

i’m a new person every month

always becoming and unbecoming only to become again

our fuller selves are not off in the future

they’re right here in the only moment that exists”

 

Sacred Pause

Love after Love (Derek Walcott)

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart… (entire poem here)

Enough (David Whyte)

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

 

The Interconnected Whole (Danna Faulds)

I pray to rest awhile

in that inner space

where Self and soul and

source all radiate their light.

May I know, if only for a

fleeting moment, that the

interconnected whole leaves

nothing outside its warm

embrace. It’s love that joins,

love that strengthens bonds,

love that illuminates and

takes me on a sacred journey.

May I open to the mystery and

silence from which this love

arises and know it as my home.