How refreshing, how truly inspiring,
how brilliantly illuminating it is
not to sit in the seat of the scornful,
not to have a belittling thought for anyone
Not to be gnawed from within
by a terror of nothingness,
not to claw my way away from there
by setting up a structure upon which to perch
from where to look down on others
How wide the view,
now that the seat is taken down,
leaving so much more room
to see the gift that each one is.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2020
I’m practicing
this way to be small,
to be nimble:
to leave behind me any armature
that could be jousted at, could topple
(divest myself of it whenever it is sparred with
or whenever it kicks up the urge to spar)
to leave behind me any burdens,
any worries,
to ask the big question
that wipes them all away
and so define myself
not as a big structure
but as a small point of light,
one that grows brighter
the more that it reflects.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2020
Every place has an opening.
There is no scorecard
for whether you take it
or not, whether you glide over
or whether you founder
People who’ve been there will tell you
there is great value
in the most hopeless place –
they will tell you how they found a door there
thar opens unimaginable light
And some may note
the value wasn’t in the circumstance
but in its inability
(although they thought it would)
to snuff them out
and how that helped them grasp
what they are made of.
Wherever you may find yourself,
take heart. Ultimately,
there is no way that you can fail.
Every moment has its opening –
When you’re ready,
you’ll go in.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2020
Not in a map
so much as a practice —
the practice of presence,
the practice of catching
the tiny upliftments
each moment holds —
the silent flowing,
the intricate crystalization,
the clasp of life,
always a celebration,
every living thing reprising
life’s essential properties,
joy ever being what rises
like oxygen, what fills and blesses,
what confirms my being here.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2020
This may seem infinitely different
but it is all the same,
the binding loops of fear
are not distinct, there is no
relative virtue in the systems
that hold us down — one pathology
is just as haunting
as another
We can find comfort, then, perhaps,
in what we share,
stop putting ourselves down,
forgive each other,
and in the space that makes,
we’ll come to see
it is the same release
that frees us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2020
A soft day —
a day for the lessons of patience,
of things still waiting in winter rain,
the colors that shine
while the brighter ones are gone
I struggled through the morning’s low
to find these — the fruits
of going slow,
slow enough to mute
any opinions
and let the inner structures
take as long as they need to
to speak for themselves.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2020
You won’t find this answer
in the room of comparison —
it will expose the sensitive film,
and the image
that would rise up in the still darkness
of your own concentration
will be flooded out,
the alchemy aborted
You will find this answer
only as you learn
to close everything out
except the micro movements
of the present moment
as they unfold in timelessness
In that moment
(who can say how long it takes —
days? years? decades?)
you will see.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2020
After this, I’m hoping
to remember to surrender daily,
or more often, as needed,
to give up all the small accumulations
trying to accrete,
to make themselves be something
and to fool me into thinking they are me
Ach — let them all dissolve,
may their lurid blooms float up
and dissipate
in the springing forth of what sustains me,
in the burble lift of purification,
the constant renewing of my place
in the unity of being.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2020
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
Considering a vow of internal silence,
I practice. Let my times proceed
without a narrative, let me take things in
constructing no instructions,
let me see people
without drawing conclusions.
In the ensuing quiet
I may hear
the jokes the ravens tell
across the hills.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2019