Tag Archives: purpose

Holding On

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Take me in

to hidden chambers
Lift the secret latches
Solve the puzzle locks
Bring me into mystery
and endow me there
What I’ve heard in silence
I will shout from mountains
It is right
that everybody hear this truth
That it begin to offer
another way of seeing
another way to be:

Spirit, I will hold you
I will cling
like an infant
to my mother
I will not let go
I’ll feel the flow
of infant love
that holds on tight with such need
in the instinct of connection
but not in desperation —
in affection

Spirit, when you fly
and the wind rushes around us
and the land 
falls away beneath us
and the air grows cool
I will cling
to your warmth
I will hold on with love
and whoop
with heart-rush joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2012


Metamorphosis

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Nothing stops the peace
of this release:
The shrunken husk,
the burst cocoon,
curls in upon itself
and so recedes
No need to seek its cloister
anymore

The bright wings pumping full of life
stretching out to own a greater sphere
affirm my purpose
and epitomize
why I’m here

So I begin to learn
to move, inhabit this expansive dome
To seek the currents in the air
To find myself at home

And if I need to feel a close embrace
I’ll seek it in a way that lets my wings stay free
Angelic cradling and seeing, face to face
how we embody what we’re meant to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2012
Music in background: “Evening Chat” by Isaac Shepard


a humble prayer

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today

let me own no opinion
let me be led
let me not try
to construct meaning,
envision purpose,
steer my craft
there is plenty here
in this receptive place
enough to do
in learning, listening, following
that I don’t need
to pull a plan from the air
don’t need to
invent or vaunt myself
it’s enough
to be here.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 25, 2012

Music in background: “Simple Moments” by Isaac Shepard




Lullaby for Edward

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Spirit current, take this man
Move as him in light and sound
Bear him on a journey of remembering

Fill the hollow of his soul
Let him know himself as whole
Coursing joy and steady strength engendering

All that he has been since long before the dawn of time
Let it flow through him in a reverberating chime
Bring him through the shadow of these weary days
Fill his heart with laughter and his lips with praise
Let him fly in surety that everywhere he’s roamed
He’s always been in your embrace
And so forever home.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2012



Sacred Unfolding

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Around a seed of thought
Substance gathers
The infant leaf
Forms itself 
From nothing
And the essence of everything —
Water from the network of the soil
Last year’s sun released from secret storage
Love that calls them to the service
Of the timeless pattern

It forms itself
Pleated, furled, or crumpled
In its tiny space
Its weightless impulse summons energy
More than it can hold within its sphere
So it expands
Unfolds, unfurls, stretches out
To raise its tender head
And join the dance of spring.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2012



Love and Magic: Three Enchantments

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 I.
When people love
they make magic
Everything living responds to it
Land rises up at its touch
Joyfully bends as it bends them
Brings forth a beauty
that calls forth their love again
making both ever more rich.
II.
In the dance of love
The will does not reside in either entity
It hovers in that charged and potent
mystic space between them
When they move to follow it
it’s nothing like
the simple, hollow closure
that comes from exercising one’s own will
It’s an exhilaration
and it brings a jubilation
and a satisfaction nothing else can fill.
III.
Magic is real
It is the dance of love
Everyone who loves creates it
sparkling in everything they touch
Others, when they see it, know it
Even if it’s nothing they can name
That which has been loved
will lift them
Bless them so they’ll never be the same. 

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2012


(background music: Isaac Shepard, “Into Spring”)



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


Monday, downtown

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Monday Downtown (background music: Isaac Shepard “Before Dawn”)


Oh, humanity!
Working at your tired charades
Moving through so many empty boxes
Desiccated corridors
Courses without meaning

Look how amazing you are!
Look how, even when the rules are cast
to close out any purpose, light or joy
You still find ways to shine:
Within this skewed account of life
your light slips through the chinks
and though at times refracted
blazes forth
Makes us maybe take a while to notice
all the places where it is suppressed
Just think: if we were free
what brilliance we would show

It is our destiny
We will prevail
We will shine clear
We’ll banish all the false demands
The failed array of hoops, constrictive bands
Deny the faulty purposes
that disappointed us
Swing free
on the strength of our unstoppable
creative rush!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2012


All I want

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(background music Isaac Shepard “All Smiles”)



All I want
is everything —
It’s not too much to ask
All I want is oneness
To soar in tune
in the surging seething symphony
of being
To be the roaring pounding flow
of all things living
To have my own song
constantly meet its harmony
My rhythm locked ecstatically
in polyrhythmic counterpoint
My down-bounce catapulting
someone else’s flight
All I want
in this moment
is the bright contact
that multiplies light
That pulses back the richest chord
and wraps us
in its sacred ring of sound.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 11, 2012



This body made of thought

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In this body made of thought
Made of moving, intersecting vertices
Made of whorls of cross connecting vortexes
There is a place unutterably still

A furry animal may curl and rest
So soft, so trusting, so at home
While outside, body moves
As mistress of the winds
Interchanging energetic waves

This body made of thought is hard to size
It sinks into the earth, it kisses skies
It moves with and creates the winds that rise
It’s everything reflected in its eyes

While on the inside, concentrated quiet
A weightless place, where every forming impulse
floats
before its launch in integrated motion
and after it’s received back to its home

It is a new anatomy
What book has shown us this?
And yet we saw it
And we felt it
And we named it what it is
And now that we have named it
We’ll see it more and more
Dynamic body made of thought
And its deep, quiet, potent core.

 © Wendy Mulhern
March 4, 2012