Teach me what to give up
and what to hold on to –
these things get so tangled
in the day to day of interaction –
threads of care with threads of
false responsibility,
desire for healing
with efforts to instruct
and I just need
everything to come clear –
to throw it all away
and let You hold
the threads that count.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 5, 2022
Consent to joy –
don’t ask it to prove itself –
consent to it
and you will see it rise
like wisps of morning fog,
you’ll see it
in a tree limb’s gesture,
you’ll feel it
like the sun across the hill,
bringing hope with it,
shedding light on purpose
Consent to joy –
it wants to shine in you,
it wants you,
all of you –
it wants you as you are.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 4, 2022
The entire world
and how I know it,
and how it knows me,
may be something completely other
than what I suppose,
but the ability to finally
get the air under my wings
and hold myself aloft in dreams
brings a state of relaxation
with enough renewal in it
to bring enchantment
to my vision of the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 3, 2022
Yesterday I walked around
and spoke to our little trees –
I told them of my vision of a canopy
where they would touch limbs
and be a happy welcome
to so many living things.
I told them of my gratitude that they were there
and my anticipation of their coming grandeur
Later, when I came outside again,
I smiled, remembering our conversation,
which was part of how I knew
communication had gone both ways.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 2, 2022
The day brought new landscapes
in most expressive watercolor
after the night’s rain,
and I handily forgot
my struggles of yesterday,
as if they were nothing,
though nothing had changed –
how blithely I forget!
and there may be a clue there –
perhaps I’m allowed
to be made new.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 30, 2022
When I release the labels,
every one of us can slip through the bars,
free as fish, smooth as silver flashes,
anything that bound us up in judgment
left behind, caught against the grate
We didn’t need those definitions –
we can laugh in sleek joy
to find ourselves united
in the bright grace of our being
and the unity with which we move,
sharing currents and clarity,
surging onwards along our common course.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 28, 2022
You can’t touch the day
without being touched back,
you can’t touch the truth
without wonder
There’s no avoiding the transformation,
your substance chiming crystalline,
suddenly conductive of the whole
intensity of light,
your hands tingling with power
Once the connection is made,
nothing can be taken from you –
the wholeness of your integrity
renders you unassailable.
You are a gift now,
for you can’t help bestowing
the transformation
everywhere you go.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 27, 2022
In the domain of crickets,
in the realm of bright secrets,
things you can know
for the price of precise attention,
is a truth within each of us,
found when your gaze goes between
the beliefs and conventions,
practices, preferences, habits,
and stated intentions,
falling instead on the flickering glow
of that substance of us
that wells up from below
in response to what touches us
deeper than anything,
moving our hearts to delight,
quickening us and our light.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2022
Little one, today you are free
of the choice you made
so long ago, when your body
was way too small
for such decision
and you were way too new
for that kind of burden
It was a lie, the need to choose –
you really could have had
all the good, and you still can –
you are free from every threatened consequence
You always have been a clear chime,
and no slipped felt could ever dull your tone.
Today, you can feel your full resonance,
today you are free to ring.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 25, 2022
I must remind myself
my Father’s world is kinder
than the one that I grew up in –
my failures, glaring though they are
do not require an unrelenting penance
I need only turn –
my honest self awaits,
humble and attentive and responsive,
wholly furnished and appointed
to reflect.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 23, 2022