I’m learning the art
of not saying much,
of recognizing
that the solid fact of presence
can convey acceptance
more than words
and that acceptance
is almost always
more needed than instruction,
and that my greatest work
is learning to convey an infinite amount,
for only infinity is enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2021
I wanted to comfort
my seven year old self
as she walked the asphalt playground
singing a song to herself
to provide a good story
for why she walked alone,
never dreaming
what lines she had crossed
in the effort to excel
at a game with broken rules,
how her own scoffing at others
was what condemned her to her solitary lot
In comforting myself
I wish to comfort
every lonely one
(in their past or in their present)
who was skewered by the twisted rules,
tricked into condemning,
then finding themselves caught
on one side of the story or the other
I wish to tell us all
the game and all its rules are over –
all ye all ye in free –
come on home!
©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2021
And if you need to stand up
in a crowded room
and speak for yourself,
if you need to be witnessed,
if you have done so, many many times
in the theater of your mind
Then the least I can offer
is a sympathetic ear,
an acceptance free of judgment,
a starting point that everyone deserves,
a place your innocence can surface,
can find its focus,
can come fully clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2021
I can smile
at the little ways you find
to be yourself, to make yourself a place
These things don’t need
to be judged or graded,
don’t need to be negotiated
You have always wanted
someone to love you just the way you are –
I can be that person – why not?
©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2020
Unless everyone gets into heaven,
nobody does,
for it wouldn’t be heaven
without each of us
It couldn’t be heaven
without including
the utter end of condemnation,
that nobody can be a loser,
no one lost, no one left out
And everyone who’s been annoyed by me,
and anyone for whom I’ve felt annoyance –
We’ll all be reconciled, we’ll be forgiven,
and thus experience
the peace that is the reign of heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2020
You were here
when the morning stars sang together,
you were here
at the foundation of the earth
When you know yourself as essence,
as what steps out in wonder
at the gifts of the day,
you can see that years
have never changed you,
and all the twists of circumstance
will always fail to knot you up
in some unfortunate condition
Your belovedness
is clear as light
and as immutable —
you don’t need to make yourself be anything —
you are here
And I will tell you this
every day, every hour,
as often as you need it,
and if I weren’t here
the day would still tell you the same thing.
The trees, the wind, the bright waves on the water
—they will tell you, and the birds will, too.
Listen, and you will hear.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 25, 2019
Every one of these structures
is a place of refuge, a thing
cobbled together against the void,
the glass-crushing nothingness
of rejection. For fear that we’d
implode and shatter,
we have built these forms —
so many of them,
in such different modes
And if we knew there is no void,
no vacuum, we could walk free.
We wouldn’t be attached
to all those convoluted rules,
those strange behaviors
If we knew the Allness
covers all of us,
we would be united.
And we would know we’re safe,
and be at peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2019
Outside and inside,
two kinds of evening glow,
and there’s one thing —
really only one—
you need to know
As sun’s last light
paints orange above the hills
and the fire has finally
driven out the evening’s chill,
there’s one thing —
really only one needed —
to make the warmth stay,
to make it real
Heaven and earth
may be the same playground
where the children of the house can romp.
They are never uncompanioned,
never left alone,
they’re always celebrated,
always home.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2018
There is a place for you,
a gentle, easy place,
a place with no relation
to what or where you’ve been
There is a place where
you won’t even remember
what it was to worry,
what it was to wait to be accepted
All you thought you wanted
falls like sticks before a flood,
before the welling up
of your true unleashed desire
You can breathe it
and also drink it
and it takes you down
to the place that you’ve been longing for,
the place that has so long awaited you.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 28, 2018
Still tentative on this
but fascinated
to be delivered to the laughing place,
the place where there’s no weight
against my eye sockets, no barb
at the back of my throat,
no narrowing of eyes and set of jaw,
no slump of daily dosage of defeat
Can I ease in
to this wide plain
where I have confidence
in every person’s inner voice
and in the trueness of its counsel,
how it delivers each of them
as it delivers me —And any picture to the contrary
engenders laughter,
through the gentle affirmation
of the presence of the One Mind
that motivates and orchestrates us all?
©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2018