No Worries

sailboat through trees

Here is how I let go
of the string of worry,
here is how I keep it
from pulling me sideways,
from making me say things
(in my resultant wobbliness)
that make the air tense between us:

I let go by remembering
no one has ever soared
with worry on her wings,
and if we lived by worry
we couldn’t move at all

We are in Mind
and nowhere else,
and Mind knows us balanced,
and Mind designs all the spaces —
the flow of us,
the cushioning air,
the trail and all the riders on it,
and their balance and their thoughts.

It’s the nature of Mind
to be harmony — we are all expressions
of one grand idea.
We can’t fall out of it,
so we can’t crash. So there’s no place
for worry here.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2016

Nothing More

pond in golds

I find myself suddenly
very small,
very still,
glad enough to have
nothing to say,
profoundly relieved
to realize
I’m not my life’s designer

Even more, I see
that it has never been my job
to design or to evaluate
any other life.
I am small and still
in the great hush of seeing
All these lives are each their own,
yet meshed together
in a design so many spectra vaster
than I can even count

These lives, like mine
are loved with such tenderness
there’s nothing I can say about it.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 15, 2015

Untangled

last leaves

You lift me from my tangled threads of story,
though I grab back at them, keep trying
to catch them up, to follow them,
to tease them out

Your hand is firm,
You hold me still
until I recognize
I was not ever tied
to all those histories,
never bound to those projected outcomes

I have always been
determined solely
by Your essence.
Your untroubled knowing of who I am
sings me into being
in every moment,
never moved by any other force,
hallowed, safe, and steady on my course.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 1, 2015

Reasoning

fall oak2

After the convulsive flex of fear,
we come back, we take stock,
and we see
there is nothing we can stand on
except what we have always known,
nothing we can flee to
except the truth

If Life planned to destroy us,
it would have done so a long time ago.
If Life could destroy us
it wouldn’t exist
for it would have discarded
the love-cohesion
that holds things together.
It couldn’t make a universe
without being Love,
and it couldn’t be Love
without cherishing each of us.

What Love cherishes,
it can’t destroy,
so we are safe,
as is every being
that moves in the grand circles
that constitute everything.

This is the truth we stand on.
Fear couldn’t find it for us,
and fear can’t take it away.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 31, 2015

I Shall Be Clean

sequoias

Well, I can’t purify myself
and I can’t improve my state of mind,
can’t add a cubit to my stature,
can’t fix myself, can’t fix another

But I can appeal
to the ageless order of being
that sings through winds,
that plays through rain,
that blows the scent of oceans
up majestic mountains,
that brings the scent of snow back down

I can appeal
to what twines together
the intricate lacings of life,
the waves of movement,
the harmony of breath

There is a knowing
before which my own concepts
are rendered silent.
Dip me in seven times
and I’ll be clean.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 28, 2015

Great Shall Be Their Peace

Cherry hill tree

I will not teach anymore
and I won’t imagine teaching,
won’t package up my
thoughts and observations,
won’t make lessons

I have recognized the danger
of such practices —
more than my lack of leverage,
more than the difficulty
of moving things from the periphery,
is my lack of knowledge
of another’s center,
and the fact that I can’t diagnose
someone else’s lack

“They shall teach no more every man his neighbor
and every man his brother saying ‘know the Lord’
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,
saith the Lord”

“Thy children shall be taught of God
and great shall be their peace”

I will not try to teach —
Instead, I’ll listen,
I’ll strive to learn,
on each occasion,
what the infinite has already imparted
to each thirsting soul,
each waiting heart.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2015

The Function of Tears

function of tears

Here at the very bottom
I begin to detect
the function of tears —
They are our call for reconnection,
to feel again the waves
that flow through our lives,
to be borne up, to be carried,
to let go of trying to know anything,
wash away our failed attempts
to make things work,
get us to the place where all our heaving ends
and we can feel
the still and gentle Allness
embrace us once again.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 7, 2015

The Allness

Allness

There is no word
for the vastness of this Love.
It encompasses
so many oceans of tears,
it melts
every shard of broken, wounded fears,
It sweeps up everything
whose individual outcome
seemed to matter so much,
it holds them softly,
makes each a gem,
a light-refracting prism
of more brilliance
than they knew to hope for,
Sets all of us
on our sure and glorious course,
smoothes us together,
releases us
into the bright waterfall
where we sing our days,
still held, still safe,
still wrapped in rapture,
whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 7, 2015

Confidence

vine maples

I’m really good at
holding your hand
and keeping up —
skip-step in perfect trust

I like it, too, when you swoop me
high through the air,
our laughter mingling
under the bright sky,
I’m good at
filling up with joy

There have been names
given to me, and to my family,
names establishing our strengths
and our shortcomings,
generations of stories,
many never told, about them

But today I don’t want any name but yours,
don’t want histories, don’t want prognostications —
Today I’ll hold your hand and take your name:
I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 29, 2015