feeling poetry

anger

For warmth

I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm –
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

by Thich Nhat Hahn

Grass

Those who disappointed, betrayed, scarified! Those who
would still put their hands on me! Those who belong to
the past!

How many of us have weighted the years with groaning and
weeping? How many years have I done it how many nights
spent panting hating grieving, oh, merciless, pitiless remem-
brances!

I walk over the green hillsides, I lie down on the harsh, sun-
flavored blades and bundles of grass; the grass cares nothing
about me, it doesn't want anything from me, it rises to its
own purpose, and sweetly, following the single holy dictum:
to be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let the young girl be a
young girl freely – to let a middle-aged woman be, comfort-
ably, a middle-aged woman.

Those bloody sharps and flats – those endless calamities of
the personal past. Bah! I disown them from the rest of my
life, in which I mean to rest.

by Mary Oliver

Anger

Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.

Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, through our incoherence and through our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, an enterprise, a land or a colleague.

Anger turns to violence and violent speech when the mind refuses to countenance the vulnerability of the body in its love for all these outer things – we are often abused or have been abused by those who love us but have no vehicle to carry its understanding, who have no outer emblems of their inner care or even their own wanting to be wanted. Lacking any outer vehicle for the expression of this inner rawness they are simply overwhelmed by the elemental nature of love’s vulnerability. In their helplessness they turn their violence on the very people who are the outer representation of this inner lack of control.

But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here, it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence.

by David Whyte

emotional holding

What I need from you

I don't want your answers, your good advice. I don't want your theories about 'why' or 'how'. I don't need your pity. Your attempts to make me feel better only make me feel worse. I am human, just like you, and crave realness.

Just be present with me. Listen. Give me space. Hold my trembling hand, sometimes. Your attention is so precious to me. Your being speaks volumes.

If you feel uncomfortable, don't be ashamed. If you don't know what to say to me, that's okay; I feel that way too, sometimes. If you feel disgusted, angry, uncertain, fearful, that's okay. I love you for it. You are human, too.

Put your textbook learning to one side now. Don't try to have 'unconditional positive regard'; it feels so false to me. Forget 'empathy' - I want you to come closer than that.

See, I am you, in disguise. These are your broken bones, your shallow breaths, your twisted limbs. I am your mirror; you are seeing yourself.

Don't try to be strong for me. I am not a victim. Fall apart, if you must. Weep, if you need to weep. Mourn those shattered dreams, those lost futures. Let the past slip away too. Meet me here, now, in the fire of presence, with the fullness of your being.

I speak in an ancient language now.
I want you to be a witness.

by Jeff Foster

~

When you feel hurt inside,
just for a moment, can you actually allow yourself to feel hurt, give yourself permission to feel how you feel?
This is not passivity and you are not a victim!

This takes courage. This is self-love. This is actually the end of victimhood. Can you make room for the 'hurt one'? Don't identify with it, but don't push it away. Stay right in the middle. Don't label it as 'bad' or 'wrong' or 'evidence of a separate self'.

Come out of abstract thought, and into the living body.
Breathe into the hurt. Into the raw sensations in the belly, chest, throat, head.

Can you be present with the tender place, the sore place, the aching place, and just for a moment, not abandon yourself, or shame yourself, or blame another?
There is dignity in your wound! Be present with it. Hold it close. Infuse it with compassion. Then you are no longer in reactivity. Then you can respond - not react - from a place of love.

And you do not lose your dignity, your sense of self-worth, your power. Even though you feel hurt. So hurt actually is a portal.... to presence, to love, to this extraordinary awakening. Love changes everything, by leaving everything unchanged.

by Jeff Foster

~

When anger surges, as it will, can you stay close, and not numb it, or lash out?
When fear bursts in the body, can you breathe intoit, and not fuse with it, or run away into stories
When you feel hurt, rejected, unloved, abandoned, canyou make room for that feeling, welcome it in thebody, bow to its intensity, its fire, its presence,and not attack, or act out, or call people names?
Can you commit to not abandoning yourself now thatyou need your own love the most?
It's easy to talk about love. It's easy to teach.Until our old wounds are opened. Until life doesn'tgo our way.
What triggers you is actually inviting you to adeeper self-love. Can you see?
There is no shame in this: We all have tender places

by Jeff Foster

~

Healing hurts. But what hurts more is the refusal of the call. The true pain of living is the abandonment of self, the mind-body split that makes us fear life. Our ache may be heavy and our souls tired today, but resistance makes it all feel a thousand times worse. Rejection of where we are amplifies suffering. Until we cannot take it anymore. Until there is no way out but in… the fiercest warriors are the ones who have let life break and remake them a thousand times over.

by Jeff Foster

sorrow

~

It's not the end of the world. Just the end of a dream.
Let your heart break today. Feel your feelings. Your disappointment, anger, fear. Let all thoughts, pictures in the mind, voices in the head, have their say, and know they are only new dreams trying to take root.

And feel your feet on the ground. Bring attention back to the here and now. To yourself. Feel the morning sun on your face. The breath rising and falling. Hear the sounds all around you. The bird singing. The television blaring. The traffic, the chatter of children.

So much here remains unchanged. So much here is familiar. Life goes on. The sense of being alive. The throb and pulse of being. Your ability to love, to hold yourself in presence. To connect with others, friends and strangers. To embrace difficult sensations.

Don't abandon yourself for a chaotic world. Recommit to your path today with even greater ferocity. Nothing is so bad when you stay close to the place where you are.
Nothing is so bad when you touch your own power.
Presence itself.

by Jeff Foster

Acid

In Jakarta,
among the venders
of flowers and soft drinks,
I saw a child
with a hideous mouth,
begging,
and I knew the wound was made
for a way to stay alive.
What I gave him
wouldn't keep a dog alive.
What he gave me
from the brown coin
of his sweating face
was a look of cunning.
I carry it
like a bead of acid
to remember how,
once in a while,
you can creep out of your own life
and become someone else -
an explosion
in that nest of wires
we call the imagination.
I will never see him
again, I suppose.
But what of his rag,
this shadow
flung like a boy's body
into the walls
of my mind, bleeding
their sour taste -
insult and anger,
the great movers?

by Mary Oliver

Love sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would by yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

by Mary Oliver

Red onions, cherries, boiling potatoies, milk

Here is a soul, accepting nothing,
Obstinate as a small child
refusing tapioca, peaches, toast.

The cheeks are streaked, but dry.
The mouth is firmly closed in both directions.

Ask if you like, if it is merely sulking, or holding out for better.
The soup grows cold in the question.
The ice cream pools in its dish.

Not this, is all it knows. Not this.
As certain cut flowers refuse to drink in the vase.

And the heart, from its great distance, watches, helpless

by Jane Hirshfield

Hurt is a portal

When you feel hurt inside, just for a moment, can you actually allow yourself to feel hurt, give yourself permission to feel how you feel?

This is not passivity and you are not a victim!
This takes courage.
This is self-love.
This is actually the end of victimhood.

Can you make room for the 'hurt one'? Don't identify with it, but don't push it away. Stay right in the middle.

Don't label it as 'bad' or 'wrong' or 'evidence of a separate self'. Come out of abstract thought, and into the living body.

Breathe into the hurt. Into the raw sensations in the belly, chest, throat, head.

Can you be present with the tender place, the sore place, the aching place, and just for a moment, not abandon yourself, or shame yourself, or blame another?

There is dignity in your wound!
Be present with it.
Hold it close.
Infuse it with compassion.

Then you are no longer in reactivity. Then you can respond - not react - from a place of love.

And you do not lose your dignity,
your sense of self-worth,
your power.

Even though you feel hurt.

So hurt actually is a portal....
to presence, to love, to this extraordinary awakening.

Love changes everything,
by leaving everything unchanged.

by Jeff Foster

~

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met Christ

(jesus) my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed as

close as i’m to you
yes closer
made of nothing
but loneliness

by e.e. cummings

Aloneness

is a place deep inside of you. It is your true Home, an ever-present sanctuary of warmth and profound fulfillment that can never leave you.

When you run from your aloneness into your addictions and distractions, you will always feel lonely, disconnected from the breath and the body and the Earth.

But, in any moment, you can come Home. You can flush 'the lonely one' with awareness. Breathe deeply into the pain of separation, and make it whole again. Be here Now.

You can be alone, with all life. With the trees and the mountains. With the hands and the feet and the shoulders, even if they ache. With the breath as it rises and falls and rises again, effortlessly. With the sounds of the afternoon, with the evening song, with the night as it explodes out of the void.

It is perhaps the ultimate paradox. At the heart of our loneliness, at the core of our longing for life, we find an exquisite aloneness, a Oneness with all creation, our true salvation.

We find God in the forsaken pit of the psyche; we find the Divine in the abyss.

We find astonishing light in the darkness of ourselves.

This is the true enlightenment. To be alone and to be found, to be lost and to be saved, all before the moment even begins.

by Jeff Foster

Tell your fucking truth

I have seen miracles happen, when people just tell the truth. Not the ‘nice’ truth. Not the truth that seeks to please or comfort.

But the wild truth. The feral truth. The inconvenient truth. The tantric truth.

The ‘fucking’ truth.

The truth you’re afraid to tell. The horrible truth about yourself that you hide in order to ‘protect’ others. To avoid being ‘too much’. To avoid being shamed and rejected. To avoid being seen.

The truth of your deepest feelings: The rage you have been concealing, controlling, pasting over. The terrors you do not want to speak. The sexual urges you’ve been trying to numb. The primal longings you cannot bear to articulate.

Finally, the defences break down, and this ‘unsafe’ material emerges from deep within the unconscious. You can’t hold it back anymore. The image of the ‘good boy’ or ‘nice girl’ evaporates. The ‘perfect one’, the ‘one who has it all figured out’, the 'evolved one', these images burn.

You tremble, you sweat, you come close to vomiting, you think you might die doing it, but finally you tell the fucking truth, the truth you are deeply ashamed of. Not the abstract truth. Not the ‘spiritual’ truth. Not a carefully-worded truth designed to prevent offence. Not a neatly-packaged truth.

But a messy, fiery, sloppy human truth. A bloody, passionate, provocative, sensual, untamed and unvarnished mortal truth. A shaky, sticky, sweaty, vulnerable truth. The truth of how you feel. The truth that lets another person see you in the raw. The truth that makes one gasp. The truth that makes your heart pound.

This is the truth that will set you free.

I have seen chronic depressions and life-long anxieties lift overnight. I have seen deeply embedded traumas evaporate. I have seen fibromyalgia, migraines, chronic fatigue, unbearable back pain, bodily tension, stomach disorders, vanish, never to return.

Of course, the ‘side-effects’ of truth aren’t always this dramatic!
And we don’t step into our truth with a result in mind.

But think of the massive amounts of energy it must take to repress our animal wildness, numb our feral nature, suppress our rage, tears and terror, uphold a false image, and pretend to be ‘okay’.
Think of all the tension we hold in the body, and the damage it does to our immune systems,
when we live in fear of 'coming out'.

Take the risk of telling your truth. The truth you are afraid to tell. The truth you fear will make the world run. Find a safe person – a friend, a therapist, a counsellor, yourself – and let them in. Let them hold you as you break down.

Let them love on you as you weep, rage, quake with fear, and generally make a mess.

Tell your fucking truth to someone – it might just save your life, heal you from deep within, and connect you to humanity in ways you never imagined.

by Jeff Foster

open-hearted

Our new spirituality

Throughout these precious years I have come to discover that our humanness is not 'less than' our divine nature; it is her expression and her fulfilment.

Spiritual awakening has very little to do with transcending thoughts and feelings, denying our vulnerable humanity and attempting to escape into some state of pure awareness, some higher realm, some other dream.

Instead, we bow to our sorrow, embrace it tenderly in our arms. We hold our doubts close as we walk the path of today. We see the sacredness in our fear, the joy in our confusion, the freedom in our anger. We bow to life in all her forms, not just the 'pretty' ones.

The most alive people I have ever met are actually the most human. The most 'awake' ones often talk little of spirituality. Often they are not the teachers, spouting stale words about the separate self, the 'truth', and making promises of happiness they cannot actually live.

In my humble view, the most 'awake' ones are the ones who have cultivated a deep warm compassion within, a profound self-kindness, and who radiate that delicious empathy into the world.

One foot in awareness, the other foot dancing and playing in the glorious mess of relative existence; courageous enough to receive both ecstasy and agony with the same kind of humility.

I know no spirituality that is unwilling to bow to the broken heart and saturate it with attention, breath; to flood the darkness with light.

So we are no longer numb.

So we can meet each other in the fire.

by Jeff Foster

To the sensitive ones

Do not be ashamed of your sensitivity.
It has brought you many riches.

You see what others cannot see,
Feel what others are ashamed to feel.

You are more open, less numb. You find it harder to turn a blind eye. You have not closed your Heart, in spite of everything.

You are able to hold the most intense highs and the darkest lows in your loving embrace.

Celebrate your sensitivity! It has kept you flexible and open. You have remained close to wonder. And awareness burns brightly in you.

Don't compare yourself with others.
Don't expect them to understand. But teach them: It’s okay to feel, deeply. It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to play on the raw edge of life.
Life may seem ‘harder’ for you at times, and often you are close to overwhelm. But it’s harder still to repress your overwhelming gifts.

Sensitive ones, bring some gentleness into this weary world!
Shine on with courageous sensitivity!
You are the light bearers!

Healing Isn’t Always Supposed To ‘Feel Good’

One of the most dangerous myths we have inherited is that healing is supposed to ‘feel good’.

No, not always. Sometimes our discomfort actually intensifies as the darkness emerges into the light, as unconscious material makes its way into awareness, as our old illusions burn up. Pain is not wrong, a mistake, or a sign that we are doomed.

Pain may actually indicate that our healing process is intensifying, not stalling; that we are actually more awake and sensitive than ever, more deeply connected with the here and now, less willing to turn away.

There is such a tendency in our culture to avoid discomfort of any kind, distract ourselves from it, label it as ‘wrong’ or ‘negative’ or even ‘unspiritual’, meditate or medicate it away. Much of our Western medicine is geared towards the removal of symptoms, the silencing of disruption, the numbing of chaos and the journey towards some socially acceptable ‘normality’.

But sometimes, friends, we no longer have any interest in ‘returning to normal’! The ‘normal’ was the problem, not the solution! The status quo needed to shift. It was unstable and false. Old dreams were keeping us trapped.

Sometimes our ‘normality’ needs to break open into chaos and crisis, our pain and sorrow, frustration, exhaustion and doubts needs to be felt more fully than ever before, the heart needs to break open more completely.

Our pain is not a punishment from a judgmental god, nor a mistake in a broken universe, nor evidence of our failure and unenlightened ignorance, but a profoundly alive spiritual teaching.

Witness Jesus on the cross. The device of his torture became his ultimate invitation to healing – the rediscovery of his own unbreakable Presence prior to his human incarnation, prior to time itself.

Consider the possibility that within your suffering you are being given an invitation: to let go, to wake up from the dream of normality, to embrace life in all its brokenness and wonder. To fall in love with where you are. To come out of the story of past and future, and turn towards the present moment, the place where you stand.

Let the winds blow, let the tempests rage, let all that is false be purified, let all that is dead remain dead, let life explode where you are. You are only being invited to a deeper healing, even though it feels like pain, even though the heart is tender and raw, even though you cannot yet feel your tomorrows...

by Jeff Foster

The guest house

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

by Rumi

depression

Sacred exhaustion

Your tiredness has dignity to it!

Do not rush to pathologise it, or push it away, for it may contain great intelligence, even medicine.

You have been on a long journey from the stars, friend. Bow before your tiredness now; do not fight it any longer.

There is no shame in admitting that you cannot go on. Even the courageous need to rest.

For a great journey lies ahead. And you will need all of your resources.

Come, sit by the fire of Presence. Let the body unwind; drop into the silence here. Forget about tomorrow, let go of the journey to come, and sink into this evening's warmth.

Every great adventure is fuelled by rest at its heart.

Your tiredness is noble, friend, and contains healing power... if you would only listen...

by Jeff Foster

self-compassion

The journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the roads full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

by Mary Oliver

The heart-pounding truth

Truth is often not easy, or comfortable.
Truth can make you sweat.
It can make your legs shake, your heart pound.
It can pull the rug of certainty from under your feet.
It can destroy comfort, the status quo.
But it can make you feel alive like nothing else.

It can rip your heart open to love.
It can connect you in ways you never thought possible.

Live your deepest truth today, even if it means losing everything - your pride, your status, your image, your way of life.
For the lies, the half-truths and the burden of unspoken things will eventually suffocate you and everyone around you.
Know that you can only lose what's non-essential, anyway.
Give up everything for a truthful existence.

by Jeff Foster

connection

~

An hour is a sea
between a few, and me –
with them would harbor be –

by Emily Dickinson

~

here is the deepest secret
nobody knows.
here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky
of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.
i carry your heart.
i carry it in my heart.

by e.e. cummings

~

we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i

by e.e. cummings

Most of all

Most of all
I like the trees,
Rooted in the earth,
Silent and unafraid to be alone,
Proud in a forest
Or strong and solitary in a meadow,
Refusing to fall until the very end.
If I were to be born again
It would not be with Jesus
Or his sacred rivals,
Not with a grinning therapist
Who has been shaped
With what I have discarded.
I want to be born again with the trees
Under sun and sky.
To wake up every morning
And never wonder why.

by James Kavenaugh

Two ways to heal

There are two ways to heal.

Alone, or together.

We can heal alone:
We can make time to be with ourselves. Create space in our schedules, away from all distractions and noise and people.
We can break our addiction to “others”.
To constant communication.
To constant talking and movement and activity.
We can learn to lean into our boredom, breathe into our loneliness.
We can drench “the restless one” inside with love.
Learn to appreciate the intimacy of our solitude.
The quiet moments. The moments of sweet emptiness.
We can commune with the birds, the trees, the ocean, with space and the rich nothingness of things.
Fall into the silence and the stillness and find there an unfathomable healing love.
We can let the ground hold us.
We can lie prostrate on the ground.
Become the ground.
We can find our wholeness at the burning core of our yearning, so that we are never lonely again.
Because we are with God now, and in God.
And our deepest wounds are now flushed with God.
And God is all there is.

We can heal together:
We can open our hearts to each other.
Tell our deepest truth to other humans on this planet.
See God in each other.
Show our most unloveable parts, the parts we hide in shame and fear.
Break our addiction to isolation.
Take the risk of being rejected.
Take the risk of being loved more deeply than ever.
We can find someone - a partner, a friend, a therapist, a family member - and ask them to help midwife our authentic selves.
We can ask them if they would be willing to be present with us.
(We must ask. We cannot demand this.)
To hear our cry. To hold us as we break.
To receive our raw, unfiltered truth.
Our terror and our joy.
Our shame and our loneliness.
And not run away. And not judge us.
We can ask for safety! A loving field of permission.
We can ask for that from each other.
We can learn to offer that to each other.
A safe ground of love.
That holds us in our anger, in our confusion, in our despair, and in our joy.
We are deserving of such love.
A massive love that holds and heals us from deep within.

We can be alone together and we can be together alone.
We can heal alone and we can heal together.

I am eternally grateful to the women and men who have been willing to stay present to my truth, even if it scared them.
And to the ones who felt safe enough to share theirs with me, even as they trembled while saying it.

And I am eternally grateful to myself.
The little one here.
Who found the courage to be alone.
(Though he nearly died in the process).
And meet his own infinite depths.
And shatter himself into a billion pieces for love.
And discover the One who heals all.

by Jeff Foster

compassion

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
All this must go, so you know
How desolate the landscape can be
Between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
Thinking the bus will never stop,
The passengers eating maize and chicken
Will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho,
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
How he too was someone
Who journeyed through the night with plans
And the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the deepest other thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you out into the day to mail letters and
Purchase bread,
Only kindness that raises its head
From the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
And then goes with you everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye

~

When you sit with a friend in pain,
when their world no longer makes sense;
when confusion rages and
no rest is to be found.
Just for a moment,
will you resist the temptation
to make things better,
to reassure them,
to provide answers,
even to heal them?
Will you offer your stillness, your listening,
your presence, and the warmth
of your immediacy?
Will you hold them in your heart,
with the same tenderness
of a mother holding her little one?
Will you embrace them where they are,
without needing them to change or transform
according to your own needs and schedule?
Will you stay close,
holding your own impatience
and discomfort near?
Will you look into their eyes
and see yourself?
Will you stay in the inferno of healing
with them, trusting in disintegration,
knowing that you are only witnessing
the falling away of an old dream?
Sometimes in doing nothing
everything is undone,
and love is revealed to be
the only true medicine."

by Jeff Foster and Matt Licata

fear

~

Today near eventide I did lead
the girl who has no seeing
a little way into the forest
where it was darkness and shadows were.
I led her toward a shadow
that was coming our way.
It did touch her cheeks
with its velvety fingers.
And now she too
does have likings for shadows.
And her fear that was is gone.

by Opal Whitley

~

There are two core fears:
losing what you have,
and not getting what you want.

There is one solution:
Falling in love with where you are.

by Jeff Foster

gratitude

The place I want to get back to

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let’s see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering,
Such gifts, bestowed,
can’t be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

by Mary Oliver