What would you do
if you absolutely knew
you are loved — if you could
feel it inside
like a bright coal,
like a soft breath,
like the concentration of
everything you can take in
into one potent sphere inside yourself,
pulsing calmness and joy
in fountains, spilling laughter
bubbling and streaming
through your aura
What would you do
if you knew
the love you are
could light the same
in many others, anyone, in fact
that you can see?
©Wendy Mulhern
February 10, 2017
My little mind, with all its love
held in potential,
awaiting its permission,
awaiting right conditions,
is in the business of deferring good
It has its explanations and excuses,
it has its blame, it has its resignation,
it tells me that my joy depends
on things that happen and what others do
I choose, today, the grand act of surrender
of my mental machinations
to the one Mind —
my partial, hesitating love
to Love, the universal and divine.
If I can stay with Mind, with Love,
that’s all I have to hold,
for Love is in the business
of turning straw to gold.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2016
That which saves us
doesn’t need to overthrow anything —
it simply opens the inner
gates to infinity,
simply replaces the whole landscape
— all its former haunts of fear —
with something far more solid
than we’ve ever walked on,
each footprint now
flooding with light,
each footstep bringing new views
That which seemed to hold us
so firmly trapped,
we simply slip from
into a different frame,
a kinder set of causes
— no longer the indifferent laws
that don’t care how we fall —
Here our cause loves us
and arranges our safe landings
and our exhilarating flights.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 18, 2016
I feel what’s real
has been here all along —
it sometimes stood in shadow
beside everything that we were striving for
And sometimes in our clamor
we would wholly mute it out,
and sometimes in our prayer
it would sift in,
subtle as light between branches
lapping limb shadows
across the other trees,
coming into quiet focus, recognized as substance
by the joy that rises, and the fullness
And happiness turns out to be so simple,
not needing anything but presence —
presence and welcome, kindness and acceptance,
the free gift of loving you
just because you’re here,
the many-dreamed essence suddenly clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 16, 2016
I woke up grateful
because good is the only power
and in my struggle
against all that is evil,
I don’t need to take
a mean-spirited stance,
don’t need to commune
with comeuppance
or deal in retaliation,
don’t need disgust
or even indignation
I woke up grateful
that the best I can do
is to fill my soul with
the presence of goodness.
When fighting hate with love,
love is what counts
Love effortlessly deconstructs
the structures of oppression,
love casts no one as villain
but liberates us all
from the mazes of pain
I woke up grateful
that the work of my day
is so joyful, so boundless —
to let Love lead me,
to eagerly follow.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 10, 2016
These things are revealed to me
day by day:
the freedom that is possible,
and, too, the webs that trap us
and trick us into actions we don’t want
None of us desire to oppress each other,
none of us desire to offend,
none of us desire to be stupid or obtuse,
each of us would rather be a friend
We feel the need to clamor to be heard,
we feel the need to strike back when we’re slighted,
we feel the need to see the balance tip toward justice,
we wonder how the others
can be so benighted
Such thoughts don’t free me, though.
Nor will any resolution I can make.
Let me attune to everyone’s desire
to be free to love. Let my life
show them that they are.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 9, 2016
There are things about the calculus of love
which are meticulously hidden
from the common story
The equations of care and of giving
are set forth as a balance, with a tally
as if love should be judiciously bestowed
on those who prove their worthiness,
who earn it
But this arithmetic cannot account
for the infinity of life released by loving,
the boundless joy that courses through a lover
when love is simply wholly freely given
We’re made to think that if we love,
we’re owed something,
but in the calculus of love
we learn we’re not.
The lessons are not easy
but Love will tutor us,
if we show up in love each day and practice.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 5, 2016
This is my quiet space,
this is my window
into the universe
This is where
what I can see
is only limited
by the size of my willingness
to receive. I can take in
myriad vistas, flying undulating planes
of microscopic order. I can see the worlds
for whom my being moves
in geologic time. I can feel
the grand repose
of the colossal slowness
of my motion
This is my place to wait for
the touch that lights me up,
that reckons me
in the scale of infinity,
that renders me relevant
in the love of all things.
This is the touch that loves me
and awakens my boundless love.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2016
I am thankful
for my love of music
and my love of color
and my love of friends and family
and my love of strangers
I’m thankful for my love
of wind and rain, of trees,
of wild waters, sun and skies,
of light and motion, and fluid patterns
I’m thankful for my love,
because all these things are wonderful
but if I didn’t love them,
I wouldn’t know.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 24, 2016
Let the light of kindness
shine upon us all
now in the low time of the sun’s angle
when momentary gleams offer
bittersweet awareness —
a few bright leaves among the bare branches
lit up against the dark clouds
Let kindness be the warmth
upon the tangled coil
of hunching inward against the cold,
let it glow upon
the laughter stretched too thin
to counter tension
At the touch of kindness
we can uncurl,
stretch out the places that were cramped and pained,
open outward into the comfort
of seeing there’s a place for us again
And as we are kind,
we will feel the flow of golden,
spreading richly through our limbs,
suffusing skin,
promising sustenance
lasting through winter’s chill
bringing us supple
into spring’s sweet rays.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2016