Tag Archives: grace

This Goodness

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This is a slow learning,
to unclasp the grip
let hands relax
let go of trying
to hoard a share of good,
enough, perhaps
to shield me from my fears

This is a slow learning —
in time the breath grows deeper,
there are more before the gasp —
I start to find the space
to take in calm

This goodness is not mine to own,
to pull inside, to hold, to use
to stop the gaps within

Instead this goodness
is what holds me
and sweeps on through,
filling up all the emptiness,
flooding out the fear
as much for everyone
as for anyone
(me too)
slow or fast,
right here.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 13, 2017

Coming Clean

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As I notice myself
keeping a wary distance
from people being nice
in an L.A. kind of way
and people wearing urban liberal
like trendy clothes,
and people easy in their answers —
any kind of answers —
for why the world is wrong
in so many errant places

I see it’s all the same —
my wariness, their certainty,
the self-approving niceness,
none of which have the virtue
of simple, heartfelt keening
for the world

No matter. We’ll bring our husks,
our empty shells, our broken explanations,
we’ll set them down
where Truth’s tide will take them.
We’ll let ourselves be washed and lifted
in the embracing waves.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2017

Here Where You Are

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Here where you are,
as you are held,
nothing can jostle
your settled being

No shock nor growl
can stop the steady purring
of your confidence,
your centered peace

Not even a thousand
murmuring grumblers,
self-justified and full of disapproval,
can ever touch you

Even if it seems like
they got inside
and are screaming at you
from within —
they can’t —
they aren’t you, and never have been

Here where you are
in the Principle that holds you
you are always safe.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2017

“Give me, oh Lord, an understanding heart”

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Take me beyond having answers
to the peace that stills the questions,
to the knowing that is the comfort
before which no doubts, no lack, can stand

I don’t expect or desire
to be seen as someone who understands —
I desire instead to see
understanding like dawn
bathing us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2017

What the morning told me

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You can have
all the freedom, all the blessing,
all the grace you want —
just don’t try to hoard it

You can be
a changer of the world,
whose outlook
transforms the frames you see —
brings them to alignment
with their essential goodness —
just don’t seek to take the credit

You can know the bliss of oneness,
commune with Allness, dance infinity —
you won’t miss
the things that can’t come with you,
wake up — shake off the dream —
you’ll see.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 18, 2017

Meeting Place

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Not me, not you,
not the accumulation
of our feats and foibles,
not our prowess, not our evolving,
not the challenges we’ve met
or failed to conquer

But rather, the willing leaving
of all those stories, all those chains,
responding to what calls
the radical insides, the rawest
and purest of desires,
that which, when we ride with it,
thrums us alive,
each moment more
than we could imagine

This is where, meeting,
we will be amazed with each other
and at the same time, with ourselves —
this is where we’ll tell ourselves,
over and over,
yes and yes, yes and yes and yes.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 6, 2017

The Physics of Innocence

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This is the physics of innocence,
the way no harm can attach
to one whose only impulse
is the call of life

Life calls to life
and life answers
in that quickened attention
that runs circles around the moments
even as the gaze holds steady,
connection a constant discovery,
oneness a revelation

The physics of innocence
is how we all fit
into the same song —
we find the harmony
and are glad.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 4, 2017

What I Hoped to Convey

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No sadness, large or small,
no let down, present or imagined,
has any right to cast a pall
on your exuberant existence

There may be things you need to learn—
this doesn’t make you bad.
The fires of transformation, as they burn,
will bring you, clear and brightened,
far beyond
anything you may have thought you had

Each of us gets to go there,
each of us has to —
each of us, emerging from the flames,
will be new-formed, holy,
and yet the very essence
of what we’ve always known we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2017

Life is Gracious

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There’s no escaping
the alchemy of grace —
dark times as well as bright times
have brought me to this place

The strength that rose up clear
against the bleakness,
the shine of presence
where the light was dim,
the sustenance that came from perseverance
revealed the key to all-sustaining joy

Yes, I was sent
down cold and bitter winds,
yes, it was a path
I never would have chosen,
driven through a narrow pass
where so much fluff was driven out
and I could feel the spareness
of my bones

It’s only now, some two years later,
two winters’ thaw, two springs’ renewal,
that brightness rises clean
along the edges of my days
and in the vigor of my growth
I see where I have come
and count it all for grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2017