Tag Archives: learning

Instruction

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Following the path of bees,
of roots, I find myself wordless –
voices of instruction silenced,
the work at hand teaching
with the tools it finds in me:
fascination, patience,
admiration, willingness  –
these things that render me able
to ride the lesson through its bends and lurches
into the next moment

And I consider:
many are eager to instruct,
but they can only help me
when I have this attitude  –
can only pull me forward
when I stand in the present intelligence
that everything here reflects.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2023


“And they shall no more teach”

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Here in this opening place,
we serve music
and we serve truth,
and all that we have to say to each other
is the affirmation of presence,
of breath, of movement,
of rolling and unfolding,
of spirit and flight

For we won’t teach each other, anymore,
saying “know what’s true,”
for truth will spring out from our being,
each of us a revelation,
cause for all of us
to rejoice.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 22, 2022

Watershed

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My thoughts spread
like the perception of watersheds,
they sink, gather, coalesce, and run,
and I know that too fast a flow
will pull away soil, though also
expose some ancient rocks,
carve an abiding way,
and I see
that any engineering
needs a light touch  –
humility, and much listening,
and honoring geology at hand
so all the plants
can give as they’re designed to –
holding soil, or decompacting,
pioneering, and allowing
the slow sprout of trees
that may take centuries to mature ,
for which we now create
conditions to begin.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2022

Altar

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Today has been graceful,
its revelations gentle,
its tasks supportive of the higher learning
to which I’m called

I’m called to bring my efforts to the altar
and leave them there, for after all,
what use are they to me,
except I offer them?
And what can I receive
but what was made to fit me
by that same all good
with which I leave my gifts?

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2022

Thursday

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Every week it’s suddenly Thursday,
and then Thursday’s gone

But all.of this tumble has nothing to do
with the progress at hand,
which rolls out like sine waves
from the turning of the wheel
and goes forth like thistle seeds released

I keep learning the same thing.
Every day it’s new.
Every day I am amazed to discover it

I’m like a spaceship setting off
across light years,
the universe unfolding and enfolding,
stars in every direction,
heartbeat present and insistent.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 9,  2021

Practicing

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Here’s me practicing again,
and my piano practice is rough.
Maybe because it’s plagued
with the same thing that slowed
my other practice, in times past —
a sense I’d done enough, I shouldn’t
have to — it should come to me
by now — it’s come to others —
surely by now I’ve worked
as much as they …

Here’s me applying a lesson
to myself: as with that practice,
so with this — it takes immersion.
It takes abandoning, entirely,
thoughts of time and measurement.
It takes the humbleness
to be the instrument
of what is coming through …

If I can do it there,
well, the question is,
am I willing to do it here?

©Wendy Mulhern
December 14, 2019

Following

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This is not a process of grand arcs,
though grand arcs inform it,
this is the way light falls
on every mote, on every crumble
of the soil, the way it sifts
between the needles,
falls to earth in chinks among the shadows

I cannot accomplish it
in one great sweep —
I follow it along the moments,
let the light seep
into every patch of thought it can redeem,
understand it now and now and now
ever new again along my path.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2019

Recurring Lesson

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Back to the loop again
of learning
not to be afraid —
it’s not that difficult,
though it may seem so
in the echo chamber
of my benighted mind

I free myself from there
by tracing, in my thought,
the circle that enfolds us all,
that leaves out nothing,
so everyone, and every cause,
surrenders to the fact of being loved.
And in the all embracing love,
there is no fear.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 30, 2019

Building

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We go each day to the house
to see how we will be built,
what skills and insight, what endurance
will arise in us to meet the day’s demands

For we do not come static
to any task, nor do we come
with a collected stash of virtue
to test ourselves against what is required

We come to grow, we come to change,
we come to learn,
we come to be made new,
to be transformed,
and more than what we make
with wood and nails and stone,
this will be our building,
this will be our home.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 24, 2019

Meaning

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With infinite patience
I’m brought round again
to learn the new meanings
which are the old meanings
from before the world began

I will learn them
here in the calm of late afternoon,
here in the rain washed, sun graced moments
when the turkeys wander back
from across the field
and crickets sing softly
and grasshoppers click

This isn’t something
I could ever learn alone,
and the great wonder is,
I don’t have to.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 19, 2019