No part of you
is beyond saving,
no cords of your life
so unravelled
that they can’t be rejoined,
there are no stray hopes
so lost they can’t be found,
there is no place beyond redemption
Every part of you
must fill the purpose
for which it is designed,
every promise is a hint of destiny.
In the end, nothing is betrayed,
we all come home
to claim our sovereignty.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2016
In one moment, I felt myself released
from time, from space, from history —
I saw my being as comprised of
what I’d always thought was hope
but now I saw was truth,
the impulse given me,
the exclamation of my presence
which nothing can diminish
In another moment, standing
freshly in the garden,
with the rain stopped
and all the scents rising
in the open gratitude
for all this life given,
I was clearly here,
attached to these particulars,
still with this purpose
of being joy.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2016
May you be filled, daily
with what you desire daily,
that thirst that opened up in you
when the deep crevasse was formed,
when you cracked open
and the molten light welled up
swift and searing and so satisfying,
(and you had never before even known
of the desire before that happened)
May you be open like that daily,
and may you be filled.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2016
This is the jubilee,
and all debts are forgiven.
Nothing that has weighed heavy
on your sense of worth,
nothing you have tallied,
no way you were measured
and found wanting
gets to stand
Consider the sheer brightness of it,
like sheathes of water falling down mountains,
like the water-colored silence
where all clamor ceases,
like the clarity that fills your face
after the water splash:
in this moment, you are free
None of the acts or reactions
you thought had trapped you,
none of the ruts
you thought defined you,
none of the bad choices
you thought required atonement
have any mark upon your being
This is the jubilee
where you start with
what you now see
you have always been.
All debts are off. Begin.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2016
I have put it down,
the dark currency —
shaken my hands
for its good riddance
I tell myself —
just don’t pick it up,
yet I find it in my hands again.
It takes a mighty struggle
(so it says)
to let it go
But I am all light,
and it is that light
that pays my debts,
it is that light
in which I take my measure
And it is that light
of every one of us
that is our endless value —
no dark currency
has ever bought us.
In the light
we are all redeemed.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 21, 2016
I will climb out carefully,
I will extricate myself
from the piles of stories,
from the emotion webs
that snag and catch at me
I’ll step out deftly
from the wiles of glory
and assumptions
of how things have to be
I’ll climb out carefully
to the place of clarity
where the strong sun-touched winds
will sweep away the dust
of that old structure,
and I’ll breathe clear
and look, and really see.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2016
We will not save each other
but we will be saved.
When our tallies fail,
when our expectations fall,
and we’ve both put up our barriers
and each need to be saved first,
we can not save each other
But the fact that we reached out our hands
invokes the ever present aid,
the way we once saw light within each other
has earned our eyes the power to see the light
The light will save us
as it always has,
for it has never left us from its sight.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 3, 2015
You lift me from my tangled threads of story,
though I grab back at them, keep trying
to catch them up, to follow them,
to tease them out
Your hand is firm,
You hold me still
until I recognize
I was not ever tied
to all those histories,
never bound to those projected outcomes
I have always been
determined solely
by Your essence.
Your untroubled knowing of who I am
sings me into being
in every moment,
never moved by any other force,
hallowed, safe, and steady on my course.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 1, 2015
In the early morning edges
where sleep tosses its transparent images
in fractal ragged waves
across awakeness
In the pre-dawn chill
where an electric light
fails to bring the vigor of the day
There is still radiance,
jewels of peaceful thought
spreading clarity,
rays of awareness
imparting buoyant hope:
this is a day of healing.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2015
In this endeavor
I will yield
as gracefully
as a pear tree
yields her smooth fruits,
precious seed entrusted to the taker,
juice collected from the sun
concentrated here,
the best gift I can give
of my substance,
in just acknowledgement that
all that I am is perfected
in this exchange,
all that I am is indebted
to this truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2015