Tag Archives: hope

The Truth shall make you free

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Truth won’t let you settle
for a paradigm that sells your soul.
Though you may plead and pray
for what you feel would be
the easy way
(just once to be allowed 
to beat the odds,
to be the one who comes out
on the top)
you will not get it.

Truth delivers you
from the whole paradigm 
of win and lose
of being some unworthy one
Lucky today, but waiting
for inevitable failure —
Don’t despair:
You can let go of all that pain

Truth does have its demand:
You need to know it
Need to let yourself be weaned
from all the lies about your being
Then Truth delivers you
into its essence, where you rise transcendent
Free and whole, divine, beloved, resplendent.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 17, 2012


Facing the Void

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She moves with confidence
She twirls, she beams
But when she turns to face
the empty space again
She loses steam
and rivulets of insecurity
start seeping through the seams
The gaps between perceived reality
and her most treasured dreams
Now seem to yawn
The fabric she has woven with her hopes
now seems to drift in disconnected threads

What builds her up again?
What deep, supporting truth
can she believe?
What calming voice can counteract
the howling judgment
that whistles down the hollows
of her bones?

A pause to gather courage, to rethink
and reassess the evidence
A confidant to give her new perspective
Or some kind of sign
So she will choose to rise again
and meet the challenge one more time
And this time maybe she will power through
face down the void
and forge herself anew.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 6, 2012


Cuddle Your Curmudgeons

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Cuddle your curmudgeons
Lay their heads in your lap
Stroke their hair
But do not take their frowns into yourself
Don’t match their myriad complaints
with irritations of your own,
frustration since you just can’t make them see —
For if you do
you mirror forth 
that same old bitter world
that you so want to tell them isn’t real.

Cuddle your curmudgeons
whether they live within you
or are people who in some way
share your life
For if you do, then day by day
you’ll show them
Life’s more than disappointment, stress, and strife.

Cuddle your curmudgeons
For they are tender souls
They need to know your care
is unconditional.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2012



Approaching You

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The way to your open heart
and the way to mine
may be the same:
When I care more
than any calculated consequence
And I listen
not to words 
but to the cry beneath them
And I hear
not what I’ve thought before 
but that which calls right now
And I ask myself:
What does it feel like behind those eyes?
I may approach you
And if I see 
that flicker of a kindled hope
And if I feel
its resonance within
And if I shine
that flicker back in affirmation
I may arrive.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 17, 2012



Lifelines

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Many years ago,
a dozing vision told me,
“You have a lifeline to a star.”
I sat up, alert, obscurely comforted
that any chasm I might face 
could hold no threat
and that no danger loomed
of finding my life dull and flat
I had a lifeline to a star!
and it would lift me up
across light years and eons
to my dreams

Little did I know
I have so many lifelines —
distant stars the least of them —
right here
Wind touched willow singing in the sun,
Gentle currents sliding softly,
All the gems of eyes that can connect
are lifelines holding everything together
I move and feel them pull against my chest
Inviting me to heft them, find their swing
and catapult myself
in heady, death defying joy
hand over hand along their awesome web
through this bright day.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2012



Soul holding

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And when he leaves his home each day

Embarks upon his sea of consciousness
Alone along the arc he travels
through crowds and conversations, correspondences
Who holds him, stands beside him, with him, guards him?

And when she hugs her cat
and leaves for work
in shoes she chose to play the part
along the corridor down which she walks
so far from any touch or recognition
Who holds her? In whose heart resides her image?
Who keeps a constant cord of close connection
belays her, holds the strong affection
to draw her home, remind her who she is?

How is it that we spend
the vast part of our day alone
tossed in the waves of our perceptions?
So dear it is to hold in thought the anchor
of someone who is holding us within

Then, friends, let us each lift up a soul
For something so intense
it is astonishing
how light they are
And that’s because they’re held already
Glistening as strings on Spirit’s harp
Suspended intricate and steady
Still grateful for our touch
that wakes them up.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2012

Picture: Jennifer McCurdy, Gilded Wind Nest. Photo by Gary Mirando.  Background music: Max Richter “Andras”

Plea for a new economy

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All the well-paved roads
just lead to wasteland —
The greatest mecca now the shopping mall
where everything is so meticulously placed
and if they could
they would commodify the soul
Refract it into little mirrored packages
so it can make the stuff they sell attractive
tell us if we want some soul
we have to buy it
and to buy it, first we have to sell it
Many are the nets of thought to have us so believe
So deceived, we’re bought and sold
and so enslaved

But let us move into the clarity of day
And see that in reality
there is no “they”
And if we see the roads are broad and yet
their promises are hollow
and just because they have bright signs
we’re not compelled to follow
We may envision some more perfect way

A modest road, that winds beside a river
where folks on bicycles and feet could wander
A common square where people daily gather
for music, song and dance, discussion, laughter
Where there’s no price or prison for the soul
And in our giving and receiving 
we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2012


Time In

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Let me give you a “time in” —
A time of contact,
of enough cuddle
to be an answer to your lost cries
A time in
Like time before time
when everyone knew
what to do about cries
that cry meant cuddle me
Bring me in
Let me know home
Oh yes
Now is the time
for time in
for everyone:
The hothead
The curmudgeon
The one who cringes inside his shell
darting in alarm at each approach
The one who sits alone
The one who sits with all her so-called friends
hiding isolation under loud words
The ones who make their dogged resolutions
with no idea what would earn the in ticket
The ones who hide their keening under sharp motion
The ones who try all day but can’t fix it
Oh World!
Let us give each other time in
Let us come home to connection
until we have the circuits to unite
in tender understanding and affection.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2012


Basic Needs – A Checklist

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For someone to find you magnificent
in the peculiar, unvaunted ways you are yourself;
For you to feel the same about another;
To freely give the world that whole magnificence
in ways that make it multiply;
For your magnificence to blend with that of others
creating one grand splendid harmony
a seamless shining fabric made of life;
A center still point and a way to get there;
A way to see grace, and the habit of noticing.

If we commit to meeting basic needs
What greatness we shall know!  What joy,
What peace!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2012


Weight and Lightness

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Nothing in this world —
Nothing —
Not houses, not credentials
Not webs of friendship —
Has any strength to hold
the steady falling of the heart

They break like spider silk
against its weight
And it will fall right through
until it feels
the centered force of its own gravity
Until it slows
in thoughtful drift
and feels the atmosphere that gathers
meditatively
around its presence

Everything in this world —
Everything —
Each sense of home, each memory
Each smile exchanged —
Has grace to hold
the precious light that shines upon it

Grace to catch that light
and shine it forth
and be illuminated
Light that has no weight
That sits so brightly
on each snow crystal, each
hair of thistle down, each poised hope
that meekly lifts itself
into its own being.

© Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2012

(background music: Isaac Shepard, “People and Puddles”)