Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Robert Frost says it best:
My emotion has found my thought, and my thought has found my words in the poem which I wrote this morning (see below). What are the thoughts and the words of your own emotions today? Write a poem in order to find out. You will most likely be surprised.
WHO ARE YOU?
Who are you?
Are you what your friends say? Which friend?
And does it really matter what they say, in the end?
Who are you? Are you young, or are you old?
That answer is more about the judger’s age, I’m told.
Who are you?
Do you know? Do you rely on others’ to tell you who you may be?
Or do you sit with yourself, and learn about yourself organically?
Who are you?
The answer to this question is only for you to know.
The rest is all conjecture, projection, and changes as the wind does blow.
This morning on our way to visit our loved one at the hospital, we passed by something that was the perfect image of an “inside family joke”. If I tried to explain it, you wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t be funny to you at all. But I took a picture of it, and I texted it to our family chat, and I got a lot of feedback and “hahas”. I love inside jokes. I think they are some of the best forms of intimacy. There is nothing like an inside joke that makes you feel like you belong to a group of people, whether they be family or friends.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I decided to scour the internet for a good poem about “inside jokes” and my favorite poem which I found was written by a child and it was published on a website called KidzEraMag.com. Inside jokes are a universal form of love and belonging, no matter what your age.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Normally I write a poem or share a poem by another poet. However, we have another planned brunch coming up for our parents’ weekend with our youngest two children at their university. Therefore I don’t have time to whip up a poem today, or even to scour the internet for a different poem. I like this quote from the Dead Poet Society film. That’s a good question to ponder. From this day forward, “What will your verse be?”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. You’ve earned some peace in your life, don’t you think. Just for today, take it. Accept peace. Peace accepts. If you accept the moment, peace follows. Believe that you are right where you are supposed to be in your life’s journey. Because you are right where you are supposed to be.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry comes out of the most accepting, open place/space in the poet’s heart. Poetry allows for emotion, imagination, wonder and truth. Today, I am sharing a delightful poem about autumn leaves, written in the 1800s, by the American children’s writer, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who went by the pen name, Susan Coolidge. Reading it, I feel like a curious, wondrous little kid again. That’s what good writing does. Good writing intrigues you, and then transports you.
Enjoy this poem. Write one of your own. Have a lovely Sunday.
How the Leaves Came Down by Susan Coolidge
I’ll tell you how the leaves came down. The great Tree to his children said, “You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown, Yes, very sleepy, little Red; It is quite time you went to bed.”
“Ah!” begged each silly, pouting leaf, “Let us a little longer May; Dear Father Tree, behold our grief, ‘Tis such a very pleasant day We do not want to go away.”
So, just for one more merry day To the great Tree the leaflets clung, Frolicked and danced and had their way, Upon the autumn breezes swung, Whispering all their sports among,
“Perhaps the great Tree will forget And let us stay until the spring If we all beg and coax and fret.” But the great Tree did no such thing; He smiled to hear their whispering.
“Come, children all, to bed,” he cried; And ere the leaves could urge their prayer He shook his head, and far and wide, Fluttering and rustling everywhere, Down sped the leaflets through the air.
I saw them; on the ground they lay, Golden and red, a huddled swarm, Waiting till one from far away, White bed-clothes heaped upon her arm, Should come to wrap them safe and warm.
The great bare Tree looked down and smiled. “Good-night, dear little leaves” he said; And from below each sleepy child Replied “Good-night,” and murmured, “It is so nice to go to bed.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. It feels so good to be sitting in my own little writing corner, in my comfortable home with the beautiful, still sunlight filtering in. It feels so good to be unscheduled after a lovely, restorative night’s sleep. My husband is headed out on his bicycle. Riding his bike is one of my husband’s favorite things to do. I am writing and reading and sipping coffee, so I am utterly exhilarated, in the process of doing my favorite things. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog, and in my own little corner of contentment (both inside and outside), this is the poem that popped out of me (see below). What poems are trying to pop out of you? Put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard and give it a whirl. What a wonderful way to get to know yourself better!
CONTENTMENT
“What is contentment?” In meditation, she asked.
And from something inside of her, the answer was grasped.
Contentment is feeding your passions,
With time and energy and focus and love.
Yes, just feed your passions with all of the above.
Well-fed passions equal contentment, it’s true.
When you do this, you’ll find your purpose anew.
Ah, so now I clearly can see,
Contentment is living purposefully.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We are visiting our eldest son this week, and already, we are having so much fun. It’s so much amusement just relaxing and laughing and experiencing new things with our delightful son. He announced yesterday that we should go to a local spa filled with hot springs today. My husband and I were excited about that idea, but we also realized that neither of us had packed a bathing suit. (We live in Florida and we headed up north, in October.) Still we didn’t want to give up on the idea. So, last night, we decided to go shopping for bathing suits, up north, in October. Let’s just say there were very slim pickings. Much to the horror of all of us, I almost ended up with a mismatched teeny bikini on clearance for $8. I started getting very creative in my mind about what could constitute a bathing suit, but then I saw what seemed to be a helpful, busy sales clerk in one store. I told her my desperate situation and out of the depths of a filled rack that held everything but bathing suits (mostly it held fur-lined jackets and sweaters), she pulled out a tasteful, one piece, black bathing suit that was just my size. When I exclaimed, “Miracles exist!”, my husband and son said that this was a tad dramatic, but I could see that we were all sighing a big sigh of relief. My husband fared better. I actually like the swim trunks he found. So today, we go to a hot springs spa!
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Since we have a lot of adventures planned today and this week, I may have to cut the blog short. Life calls. I don’t have time to write my own poem. But I will share “The Rainbow” by William Wordsworth. I enjoy “playing” with my children, even when we are all adults. It is so important to remain a child at heart. This is considered to be Wordsworth’s greatest short poem.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. It is not lost on me that Sunday is a big football day. My husband and two of my sons LOVE football. I enjoy watching it with them, when the football teams that are playing, are teams that I actually care about. In our town, the biggest football drama is off of the field. Everyone is talking about Tom Brady’s and Gisele Bündchen’s disintegrating marriage. There is a saying that women marry men, with the hopes of changing the men, and men marry women with the hopes that the women will never change. Who knew that this saying probably applies to two of the most beautiful, talented, richest, famous people in this world, who at one time also seemed to have the “perfect relationship”? I wrote this poem this morning. It is my view of what Gisele might be thinking and feeling about her relationship.
Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry is the heartbeat of communication. You have to be deliberate when you write poetry. It’s hard to be sloppy with it. It’s a concentrated effort. I think that’s why it is meditative to write poetry. Having just taken my first sip of coffee, after a delicious morning of sleeping in, I’m not ready to be so concentrative and meditative, therefore I will share one my favorite poems written by Langston Hughes. (I’ll probably fiddle around with my words later. You should, too. Try writing some poetry. You’ll like it.)
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Welcome to Soul Sunday on the blog. Sundays are devoted to poetry here. I have chosen to share a poem written by a poet named R. DeArcos, which I think captures the feeling of how small and alone you feel when you are facing an enormous natural tempest. It is my personal spiritual beliefs that we are all one with all of creation, but when you are facing down a storm, you definitely feel small and alone. The storm is just being a storm. It’s nothing personal, but it sure feels that way.
This will be my last post regarding Hurricane Ian for a while. I promise. Most of our Floridian friends and family have spent this weekend processing our feelings about what we have just gone through. The build up of fear, uncertainty, feelings of being overwhelmed, guilt, sometimes perhaps even shame, survivor’s guilt, worries, anger, grief, etc. is all piled into your being and it takes a while, for these sensations to be fully released and washed away. (and for those people dealing with the major aftermath of Ian, those feelings will be stirring within them for quite some time) Honestly, the release of emotion is exhausting, but cleansing, until only relief and gratitude remains.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
picture credit: Big G, Twitter
Even still today, there never seems to be adequate words for this day. There is this beautiful poem though, written in 2001, by a New York journalist named Kevin Powell. This poem is called “September 11th: A Poem,” I think that this poem is fittingly beautiful for a poetry day, here on the blog .
Might it be, as my mother said to me on this ugly, sinful day,
That the world is on its last go-round?
Hijacked wild birds strip the sky of its innocent morning breath
Steel towers crumple like playing cards on an uneven metal table
Unrehearsed screams we dare not hear leap from windows
Into the open, bottomless palms of God
I cannot stand to watch life reduce
Itself to powdery dust and soot lathering the devil’s inflamed mouth
But I am fixated on the television anyhow:
Is this what slavery was like?
Is this what the holocaust was like?
Is this what famine is like?
Is this what war is like?
Is this how you felt, dear mother, when King and the two Kennedys were killed?
I want to stitch up the sky, deny humans the right to fly
Cry until my tears have washed hatred
From the mildewed underarms of history
And I want to say to the firemen
Ah, yes, the firemen:
Your husband, your father, your brother, your uncle, your friend
Thank you for speeding to the end of
Your time and thank you for showing us that
Courage is a soul so unselfish it would
Scale a collapsing building to liberate a stranger
Even as your blood relatives wonder if you are alive —
From the remains of this madness
I detect a heartbeat called life
From the remains of this madness
I smell an aroma called love
From the remains of this madness
I embrace a body called humanity
From the remains of this madness
I construct a dream called hope
From the remains of this madness
I will ride the wings of the deceased
Into the clouds, scribble their names on the sun
Erect a memorial to the moon, chant the blues
For New York City, then resurrect a world
Where a new-born rose will jut through the broken concrete.
