Soul Sunday

Jet lag is a real thing. It’s a really real thing. Despite sleeping soundly all night, I feel the need to creep back into bed. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Any poem which I would try to write, right now, would be even more garbley goop than my original poems usually end up being. Below, this poem speaks to the joys and experiencing of traveling, better than any poem I could ever hope to write. “A journey can become a sacred thing”

For the Traveler

by John O’Donohue

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1744. How do you feel about the statement, “Home is where the heart is”?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. My friend, who is an English teacher, texted this poem (shown below) to a group of us who have been friends since we were eighteen years old. It is one of the most lovely poems I have read in a long time. Enjoy.

BENEATH THE SWEATER AND THE SKIN

by Jeannette Encinias

How many years of beauty do I have left?

she asks me.

How many more do you want?

Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old

and your beauty rises in ways

your cells cannot even imagine now

and your wild bones grow luminous and

ripe, having carried the weight

of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame

with winter

and you have decades of

learning and leaving and loving

sewn into

the corners of your eyes

and your children come home

to find their own history

in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail

ferociously

and have gained the

capacity

to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea

on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon

and still have a song in your heart

Queen owl wings beating

beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there

beneath the sweater and the skin,

remember?

This is when I will take you

into my arms and coo

YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING

you’ve come so far.

I see you.

Your beauty is breathtaking.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2899. Have you ever wished upon a star?

Soul Sunday

Welcome to poetry day on the blog. This poem by Rumi explains love better than any technical explanation ever could. This is the beauty of poetry. It speaks of the “beyond”. Poetry uses words to go beyond words.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1953. What is your favorite type of casserole?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (I apologize for not publishing a post yesterday. Distractions abounded!) Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I am going to feature some poems by Irish writers. The Irish have a way with melancholic writing like no others . . . .

“The Last Rose of Summer”

’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh …

-Thomas Moore

“The Lost Land: Poems”

This is what language is:
a habitual grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this:
which hurts
just enough to be a scar
And heals just enough to be a nation.

-Eavan Boland

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

-W.B. Yeats

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2552. What’s your favorite cereal? (Especially in honor of today, I am going to say, “Lucky Charms.”)

Soul Sunday

Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Sundays are devoted to poetry here. Emily Dickinson’s poems were not widely published until after she died. She was known as a recluse and as a rebel. One of her most famous poems is below. I like it. I’ve never quite understood the desire for fame (admiration, sure, but fame – No thank you.) I believe that fame would limit your individual freedom so much, and also make you feel quite misunderstood and not quite “seen” despite being ever so seen. But honestly, I wouldn’t know. I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

666. What is one thing you do that you consider practical?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I love Sundays. Sunday is the “breathe out deeply” day of the week. Whatever happened during the week, take in the good stuff and let go of the rest. Settle yourself with ease and prepare yourself for the fresh new start of a beautiful new week. Write a poem today. Poetry helps with the process of letting go. Poetry helps with the process of going within. Poetry helps to reach deeper meaning and understanding. You are worth a poem today. You are worth a poem everyday. Here is my own poem for today:

The most beautiful souls in the world

Are experts at giving away

What they once so desperately needed.

They figured out how to harvest

What was deeply implanted inside

And they grew it, and as it flowered with fruit,

With the help of other kindred souls,

They pried open the doors,

and they let it all flow out,

To help cleanse the world of its pain.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1732. What is/was your blessing in disguise?

Soul Sunday

One of my friends commented on my post yesterday. My friend is one of those people who you can’t help but to instantly like (and her husband is the exact same way). I’ve never heard of anyone not liking her, or her husband. They are delightful. There is a saying that my grandmother used to say a lot when we were kids, “To know her, is to love her.” How wonderful to be one of those people in the world!

But getting back to business, today is poetry day on the blog. Since it is the week of Valentines Day, I am choosing to share a wonderful poem that Bob Marley wrote about love. (I consider my blog to be a curation of thought and of creativity, and it’s often not just my own thoughts and creativity. My blog is a collaboration with me, you, and many other interesting, past and present creators along the way. My blog is a thought museum, doused with a lot of emotional sauce and a bit of creative spice.) Bob Marley was a true master of the creative arts. Here is his poem:

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only.

She loved before she may love again.

But if she loves you now, what else matters?

She’s not perfect—you aren’t either,

and the two of you may never be perfect together

but if she can make you laugh,

cause you to think twice,

and admit to being human and making mistakes,

hold onto her and give her the most you can.

She may not be thinking about you every second of the day,

but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart.

So don’t hurt her, don’t change her,

don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give.

Smile when she makes you happy,

let her know when she makes you mad,

and miss her when she’s not there.”

― Bob Marley

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

650. How many pairs of shoes do you own? (my answer is – A LOT. I own A LOT of shoes.)

Soul Sunday

We just had a wonderful time with friends who recently moved to Florida from up north. So they are so full of joy and excitement and adventurously exploring all of the different things to do around here. We have lived here for 13 years now, so it has become our “normal.” Being with them, revitalizes my own delight for where we live. I get to see my “same old/same old” with fresh new eyes. It is such a lovely gift. It is truly a gift when you feel revitalized by someone else shining their bright light on what you have gotten used to seeing, and thus sometimes leave in the dark shadows. Today, on poetry day on the blog, I am only going to share one of Kahlil Gibran’s shortest, truest poems.

“Desire is Half”

Desire is half of life.

Indifference is half of death.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2740. What is something that you’re are afraid to try?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Recently The Wall Street Journal ran an article about Maksym Kryvtsov, a Ukrainian poet turned soldier. Kryvtsov, who wrote most of his poems about the horrors of the war, perished in battle, on January 7th. He was 33. One of his most well-known poems talked of his “severed arms” that would “sprout as violets in the spring.” This same poem ends with these lines:

My bones

Will sink into the earth

Will become a carcass

My busted rifle

Will rust

Poor thing

My spare clothes and equipment

Will be given to new recruits

Well I’d rather it were spring already

To finally

Bloom

As a violet.

Poetry touches our hearts and our souls in a way that more direct writing cannot seem to do. I suppose that the way to our collective hearts is a windy path, filled with mystery, nuance, feeling, and to surrendering to its ever changing direction. I wrote the poem below, just this morning, before reading again, the poem above by Maksym Kryvtsov, which my husband had kindly laid aside for me a week or so ago. I am humbled by the difference in poetry by a poet who is surrounded by the direness of war, versus a writer who leads an agreeable life, in a country not at war.

On stormy, cold, windy days,

As the rain hammers its surroundings,

Home feels so cozy, comforting, serene.

Curling up in our own corner of the world,

Fills us with the feeling of being nurtured,

By the nesting that we busied ourselves with,

in more agreeable, enticing, seductive weather.

On still, bright, inviting, playful days,

We jauntily leave home for adventures,

Full of confidence, curiosity and calm.

And we often bring home possessions,

Which remind us of our truest selves.

So that when the storms arise again,

We are surrounded by the contentment,

Of our inner selves, displayed in physical form.

Our home, which is an extension of the life of us,

Is our familiar and steadfast, shelter from the storm.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1375. Do you think happiness is a choice?

Soul Sunday

“Experience becoming . . . make your soul grow . . . . do it for the rest of your lives.” Did you read the assignment that Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five and other esteemed works, gave to these high school students in 2006? (Kurt Vonnegut died about six months after this letter was written) Today, on poetry day on the blog, let’s do his assignment. I’ll do it, if you do it: “Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody . . . . Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated recepticals.”

Why should we do this assignment? Well, Kurt Vonnegut said this will be the outcome: “You will find that you have been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”

But I suspect that you, my dear beloved readers, already know this. Bless you. I imagine that your poem is amazing. The poetry of you, already is amazing. Your soul is growing beautifully. It becomes you.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1891. Have you ever stood up for anyone?