I will not be shamed
but I will be humbled,
I will notice
what I have failed to see
I will not use it
to condemn myself,
I will use it to remind myself
that I am free
And as a free being
I don’t ever need
to host a view that fails
to reverence another.
I will not be witness
to any failing on their part,
I will witness
the strong truth that holds them steady
deeper than any shifting clouds of personality,
deeper than time,
deep as Mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2015
My body is a standing wave of Spirit —
As Spirit flows, so I am,
The steady coursing of present Life
defines my being, shapes me,
fills me with sustaining joy.
As Spirit moves, so I move —
Thus, in my flesh,
I see God.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2015
I will see God
in my own flesh,
I will know in my body
that I am healed
I will feel the truth
in that most intimate way
where my body speaks
and my so-called mind
is taken entirely by surprise
and must surrender
to the imperative
presented in the moment
This experience
will not be co-opted —
though I seek to reproduce it,
touching flesh together
to re-enact the spark,
constructing circumstances
to replay the moment,
building fantasies to lead me back
I will at last be led
to the Spirit source
that owns everything
I can feel or know,
that wakes up everything
— heart, soul, flesh —
to exaltation,
to the mystery of Life.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 10, 2015
photo by Edward Mulhern
They are not touched
by the smell of smoke
or any aftermath
of any evil thing
There is no chain of hurt
no mindless consequence
blowing down the canyons
into people’s lives,
nothing that can sit upon them
bearing down upon their lungs
Every one of them
regardless of what happened
anytime, anywhere,
can find themselves
clear and holy,
pure and whole,
just as they are imaged
in the Mind that makes them
who they are.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 9, 2015
The veil has been rent —
the illusion that plagued us
is gone, like the face of a burst balloon,
and even the reflexive repugnance
that trickled bitter down our throats
has disappeared
So we are no longer willing to accept
wheels ever-spinning in mud,
and the dragon no longer gets to
sweep away a third of the stars
from heaven
All the things we were struggling for
are lost from view —
we see the remaining distorted image
now two-dimensional
on the scrap of discarded balloon
And day rises, dew jeweled,
before our grateful eyes.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2015
When all the masks dissolve
(as well they must, against the potency
of our being)
We’ll see each other, and we’ll know
that nothing we have fretted over
ever mattered at all
The person each of us has always been,
the one we’ve always known,
turns out to never have been sullied
by failures or by fears
That deeply lovable, delightful being
we each so valiantly
have striven to defend
is who, now that the mask is down,
appears,
never faded, never fallen,
never broken, never marred by years,
ever shining, radiant and clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2015
Let my spirit
be generous enough
to offer soft landing
to the hard points,
the ragged edges,
the bony joints that come jabbing,
the blunt words that fall graceless
Let my spirit be deep enough
to see beneath the mask of self-seeking,
beyond temptation
to let stridency annoy me —
After all, we all are asking
for the same thing
We all are hoping
to find someone who will
give us what we need,
to fill the hollow hunger for
deserving approbation
Let my spirit be a rich bed,
moist and warm enough to nourish
all those worthy seeds
till the burr becomes irrelevant
in the new green.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2015
We each have struggled,
each have been isolated
and felt our path was long and hard
and that we’d failed somehow
to gain what we had hoped for
and thought had been expected of us
We had failed
or been let down
in some cruel twist or some trick test —
so many promises
left unfulfilled
But look at us here —
We’ve all come to this place
where we are bathed
in a glow cast by our own light.
We haven’t failed —
All this time
we were each following our own course
along the unerring imperative
that now dissolves all that darkness,
revealing our sweet fruits.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 17, 2015
“They shall teach no more every man his neighbor saying ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, saith the Lord.”
We shall not teach
the steps for finding goodness:
try this diet, exercise or meditation,
renounce your ego to become enlightened,
adopt these habits of communication,
release your fears, embrace your shadow
We won’t be offering
all those helpful paths
to fix yourself, to heal your life
to find out who you really are
Because you’ll know.
We all will, from the inside.
We’ll know the bright joy
that springs up within
permeating everything
bringing forth dynamic understanding
opening the infinite dimensions
of what we see we’ve always known we are.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2015
Goodness and mercy
will be in my wake
in the places I have been
after I’ve gone through
Goodness and mercy
will be the result
of my presence
like flowers blooming in footprints
All the days of my life
So I shall dwell
in the happy certainty
not only of having done no harm
but of blessing
I shall not want
for all my hope
is thus fulfilled.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 22, 2015