Entitlement is not
a happy state of the heart.
Those who are whole
desire to do their part –
they are fed by what they give –
to be a giver is to live
Compassion feeds the soul
and saves us
from swallowing the shadowed insult
of someone’s expectation to be served.
They may be arrogant, disparaging, insensitive –
compassion makes us whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 11, 2022
You are surrounded
by the knowing
of what you are,
the comfort of the truth
you are comprised of
You can relax
and let it hold you up,
be still, and let it sink
all the way in
This may take some time –
that’s fine. It can and will
reach to every tiny network
of your being, seep and saturate,
feed, regenerate,
transform what you know yourself to be,
heal your wounds and set your spirit free.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 11, 2022
.
We find you innocent,
and the prognostication
of a long horrid journey
falls away
And the notion of yourself
just discovered to be
a fearsome monster
with many a rage
for which to pay
turns out to be a dream
We shake ourselves free
from troubling illusions –
we seek refuge
in what guarantees your being,
we get used to the prospect
of not being afraid,
not now,
and not ever again.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2022
So far I am from understanding
the algorithm that comprises
who we think we are
or how we think we heal,
and what I could possibly do
to reach into those complicated nodes
and set a thing to right
But this I know:
We’re powered by the same desire,
and there are words
each of us needs to hear
coming from deep within,
ensuring us that all is well,
including us, including us.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2022
You talk about healing.
I want you to know
that I will not accept as healing
that which insists that I stuff my rage,
be polite about my pain,
and sets me on a postage stamp of
“seeing the good,”
a narrow strip of positive
To be whole, I need a truth so large
it swallows my complaint,
wraps up everything I am
in its embrace,
silences my howling
in the full-home chord
of welcome,
has space enough for all of me to soar.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2022
I venture once again
into the place of silence
where the quest is mine alone,
and much as I might want
to talk about it, it really
has nothing to do with what I think
or what another may advise
It really has nothing to do
with making sense of things,
for I am called to go beyond sense
to where the indelible touch
has left an opening
Having felt it once
I am equipped to notice
every breath of wind across its surface,
I am impelled to meet it
and find the way in.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2022
I will not settle
for the usual excuses,
I will not retreat
to helplessness
This is not my battle
so I don’t need to win it,
but neither will I stand by
to see it lost
The Mind we dwell in
is sovereign –
it owns our being, it owns our thought,
and it will bear us
on comprehensive currents
so we let go our obtuseness
and are taught.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 26, 2022
Though there is a way on paper
of drawing light with black lines,
let me not do so with my words
The page of thought is bright
and doesn’t need darkness
to delineate its inspiration
Look – I can have the Mind of Christ!
There is enough need in the world
for the lines of light to touch and heal
That healing truth, showing its presence,
defines light, defines everything.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 21, 2022
This is not quite an attraction
to those that are broken,
not quite attachment
to being broken,
liquid viscous, puddling out
This focus on the dark thick quick
and the way light shines bright
on the slick of black
is not the crux of the thing.
The pull is to go through,
the bubble closing back behind me,
space stretching huge, opening ever out
The desire is to bring back
the essence of sky
and the way to find it lofting out inside,
lifting up the prospects
from where they had been caged,
shining them out,
as sky is always vast,
releasing them into their freedom.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2022
When you find yourself alive
you still have to walk out
Once you’ve seen the overwhelming light
(not blinding, since it comes up
all around you, since it glows
through you and everything you see)
Once you’ve seen the light,
you still have to walk out
You have to go step by step
over the terrain of everything you’ve thought,
everything you’ve walked on
while not noticing its structure
You have to walk out learning
that every dogged step
can be reframed,
must be reformed,
must be transmuted by the light you glimpsed
first once, but then again
in every step that pulls light from the ground,
that grounds you in the solidness of being,
that makes real for you
the holy ground that bears you up
The light is there for you,
and still the journey’s yours –
you are alive and so
you have to walk out.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2022