Tag Archives: spirituality

Shadow Warfare

Posted on by
Reply

This shadow warfare is elusive,
for when I raise my hand to strike,
I make another shadow

I chase them inward
down all the corridors
where more and more of them have hidden —
they lay blame in sprawling overlapping patterns
over me, my circumstances, and the entities
identified as other

If I turn on them with anger or with loathing,
I’ve embodied their dark quality
and they win,
so I continue inward
till I find the only tool of victory,
inward to my grasp of endless love.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 5, 2017

The Same Stream

Posted on by
1

Feel the spreading distance,
my arms no longer reaching,
feel the melancholy seeping
as fingertips stretch empty

Feel the joining current
that holds each of us,
feel the way we’re flowing
in the same direction,
feel the sweet way our connection
is assured by simply coursing
in the same stream

Though the constellations of our friendships
may shift like clouds, may wander and disperse,
we’ll share the resonance
of what is filling us,
we’ll be the rushing song that fills our ears.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 1, 2017

There is a River

Posted on by
Reply

Let the water run and run
until it runs clear,
till it can sit transparent
in a ball jar,
when all the sediment
has been first stirred, then washed away
and we will celebrate
a well-developed well

Let my thoughts stream in goodness
till they run clear,
till agents of opacity
all disappear,
till all my impulses are pure love
and I no longer brace myself
to disapprove

There is a river
running through all consciousness,
its streams will gladden
all the hungry hearts,
I will ride it
all the way to clarity,
yes, I will ride it
from and to my source.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 25, 2017

 

A New Start

Posted on by
1

In that nightmare world
where we all are graded,
our actions weighed, our choices judged,
where all of us know painfully
we haven’t measured up
to something,
could have done better,
could do still, if only . . .

In that nightmare world, we think
we might feel better
if we’ve done better
than someone —
we think there’s comfort
in knowing that, at least,
we’re not the worst

But we are waking from that world
and look: no one has been any less
than perfect and essential,
no one has been any more than others,
and no one, even us,
has made a trail of sorry choices,
no one has earned misery or loathing

Whole cityscapes of regret
crumble away,
fall and dissolve,
leaving the shining truth
for us to live in.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 25, 2017

Motivation

Posted on by
Reply

How we each got to this place
is actually irrelevant,
as are the stories we have spun
to justify our current situation

What motivated us
is deeper than any of these things,
deeper even than what we thought we wanted,
and even what we knew we needed

What motivates us
has power to overcome
all the particulars
of time and place,
all the ins and outs
of history and reasons

What motivates us
will keep on burning
while all the papers fall away
and in the end,
beyond all of our roles,
in fearless clarity
it will shine.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2017

Choice

Posted on by
Reply

The atmosphere of my temple
is my choice. If I feel clouded,
if I can’t find the joy amid the sorrow
of my story, if the words I use
to help remember what I am
fall flat, if it seems that things
far beyond my control are at fault,
this is what I must remember

The atmosphere of my temple
is my choice. I can choose now
to let the story lie inert,
a sleeve with no breath in it.
I can choose to let warm infinity
fill me in tones of gold and orange,
I can let my peace rest, soft, around me.
I can turn away from words
to that which doesn’t need them,
I can fill my temple
with what I live to feel.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 25, 2016

Holy Night

Posted on by
Reply

We come to understand
that we are holy,
not in closing ourselves off,
not in excluding anyone,
but in refusal to be anything but kind
and in insistence on keeping our light shining
and bearing witness
to every other light
and not permitting any
to be snuffed out

We come to understand
that this is our protection —
not in hiding but in standing up
to any imposition on our wholeness.
We will not allow ourselves
to be unloving or untrue,
and this will bring all impostors down.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2016

Our Stand

Posted on by
Reply

hawthorn-and-cottonwood

We stand on holy ground.
You can feel it through your feet,
how it isn’t about this place
(opposed to any other place)
but it is about this place,
this here, connected by all points,
the way the feet of everyone
who touches down
are holy, drawing up, as they do,
all the sacredness of earth

As we stand in this place
we will not be moved.
In our holiness
we cannot be enslaved.
A thousand efforts
to catch us up
will just fall,
and we will stand as free
as vapor, as wind,
ever only responsive
to the Love that breathes us.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 21, 2016

Spirit Rising

Posted on by
Reply

lake-light-through-trees

And when the day’s duties
conspire to exclude
the deep reflective pauses,
Spirit still seeps through

In the cooking, in the caring for an elder,
in the ready presence to consult, to listen,
through the low winter light
through clouds, through windows,
and the quick arc of a short day
with its long darknesses at the edges

Spirit seeps into consciousness
like tide rising
because it belongs there
and can’t be left out.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 12, 2016

Enlightenment

Posted on by
Reply

haw

Even the inscrutable
can seem familiar —-
I can get used to the sounds of words
and not notice
I don’t know what they mean
or that, knowing the words,
I still don’t know the sense

Maybe I’ve patched some meaning on it,
an image that comes with the words,
maybe I read them thinking
of a conversation, or my afternoon

I have gone years that way
and missed, each time, the key dimension
that opens out the hidden laws,
the promised order

And if I find them,
suddenly I fly
with lift I didn’t know was there,
enlightened eyes,
and every word brings clarity
and secrets fall away like dreams —
in awe I trace the outlines
of reality.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2016