Many Thanks

to those of you that attended the Christmas Eve yoga practice for
People Gotta Eat and to Elaine Sizemore for allowing us to use the
space at Good Shepherd. WE raised a total of $407.34. To my under-
standing there is a matching grant which will double the donated amount
to $814.68, allowing $5,702.76 worth of food to be purchased.

Reading

We clap our hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait awhile with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Janist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas, a halting of hate time.

We Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the world aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, my Brother
Peace, My Sister
Peace, My Soul.
~Maya Angelou

Weekly Reading

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. 
The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! 
How much you can love! 
What you can accomplish! 
And what your potential is!"
- Anne Frank

Weekly Reading

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes.
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary,
because it means you've made the effort.

It's easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who
are also thankful for the setbacks.

Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles,
and they can become your blessings.
~Author Unknown

Weekly Reading

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

 

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

 

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

 

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

 

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

 

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

 

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

 

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

 

~ Mary Oliver 

Weekly Reading

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

~ Mary Oliver 

Weekly Reading

A Yogi’s Prayer
May all who are mean return to good;
May all who are good obtain true peace.
May all who are peaceful be freed from bonds;
May all who are free set others free.

Blessings upon all the earth;
May all of the world’s rulers uphold righteousness.
May only good fortune reach everyone;
May all the world’s creatures be happy.

May rain fall when the earth is thirsty;
May all the storehouses be filled.
May everyone here be free from injury;
May all who are good be free from fear.

May everyone know a life of joy;
May everyone live a life of health.
May everyone see only good in the world;
May everyone soon be released from pain.

May everyone overcome all their woes;
May everyone see only good in the world.
May everyone realize all their desires;
May everyone everywhere be glad.

May our mother and father be blessed;
Blessings upon every creature on earth.
May our works flourish and aid everyone,
And long may our eyes see the sun.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti (peace).

Weekly Reading

Singapore

 

In Singapore, in the airport,

A darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

 

Disgust argued in my stomach

and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

 

A poem should always have birds in it.

Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.

A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain

rising and falling.

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

 

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win.

She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?

Everybody needs a job.

 

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,

which is dull enough.

She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as

hubcaps, with a blue rag.

Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.

She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

 

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.

And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won’t happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

 

Of course, it isn’t.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life.  I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

Weekly Reading

Roses, Late Summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can't sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
So they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Just for Now,
without asking how,
let yourself sink into stillness.

Just for now,
lay down the weight
you so patiently bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive you,
and the infinite expanse of the sky grow even wider
as your awareness reaches up to meet it.

Just for now,
allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience.
Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth.

Just for now,
be boundless, free, with awakened energy
tingling in your hands and feet.
Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really
are – so fully alive that the world looks different,
newly born and vibrant,
just for now.
~ Danna Faulds

Weekly Reading

Just give me this: A rinsing out, a cleansing free of all my smaller
strivings so I can be the class act God intended. True to my purpose,
all my energy aligned behind my deepest intention.

And just this: A quieting down, a clearing away of internal ruckus,
so I can hear the huge stillness in my heart and feel how I pulse with
all creation, part and parcel of Your great singing ocean.

And this too: A willingness to notice and forgive the myriad times
I fall short, forgetting who I really am, what I really belong to. So
I can start over, fresh and clean like sweet sheets billowing in the
summer sun, my heart pierced with gratitude.
~ Belleruth Naparstek

Weekly Reading

 You, Reader

I wonder how are you going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wall paper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but listen-it was just matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning-
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside-

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time-

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

Weekly Reading

Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
~Mary Cornish

Weekly Reading

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver

Yoga in the Park will not meet today, Tuesday June 21

Weekly Reading

My Life

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.
~Joe Wenderoth

Weekly Reading

Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence –
which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.
The cat, sleeping on the fence, is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous – briefly – to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom – is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth – more famous than the dress shoe
–which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets.
To sticky children in grocery lines, famous is the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous or a buttonhole.
Not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye

weekly Reading

One or Two Things
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.

The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.


The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.


One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.


But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

  I Pray to the Birds

I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward.  

I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin 

and end each day–the invocations and benedictions of Earth.  

I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.  

And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.

~Terry Tempest Williams

Weekly Reading

I will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.
I will choose to inhabit my days.
To allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible, to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live as that which came to me as a seed goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit.
~Dawna Markova

Weekly Reading

Snow Geese

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

Weekly Reading

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world

that has in it nothing fancy.

But it seems impossible.

Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it.

The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.

The ants bore into the peony bud and

there is a dark pinprick well of sweetness.

As for the stones on the beach, forget it.

Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut,

but of course the birds were singing.

And the aspen trees were shaking

the sweetest music out of their leaves.

And that was followed by, guess what,

a momentous and beautiful silence as comes to all of us,

in little earfuls, if we’re not too hurried to hear it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs

even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,

so happy to be where they are, on the beach,

 instead of being locked up in gold.

~ Mary Oliver

The Healing Time

Finally
On my way to “yes”
I bump into all the places where I said “no” to my life

All the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again.
Where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them one by one close to my heart
and I say “holy, holy.”
~Persa Gertler

Weekly Reading

What I Believe

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man, but that his wife will remarry.
I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when allthe clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever pulls us under,
will do so gently.

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.
~Michael Blumenthal

Weekly Reading

Love

Love calms.
Poised and centered,
nothing disturbs
the peace of my soul.
Love transcends
the anxieties and cares
of the world.
Love sees clearly.
Love views all things
with insight and understanding.
Love inspires my thoughts,
harmonizes my feelings,
and blesses me
to trust life.
Love radiates
out from me
to bring peace
to my world.

~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the whitefeet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

One

The mosquito is so small
it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
Each leaf, the same.
And the black ant, hurrying.
So many lives, so many fortunes!
Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
before the slug creeps to the feast,
before the pine needles hustle down
under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.

How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and sky.
Imagine it!

A shining cup, surely!
In the moment in which there is no wind
over your shoulder,
you stare down into it,
and there you are,
your own darling face, your own eyes.
And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
and you know what else!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination.

~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.”

"Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."

"I have decided to stick with love.
Hate is too great a burden to bear."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Weekly Reading

Change III

Spirit is my strength and stability
through any change.
I can make
whatever adjustments
are necessary.
Realization keeps me poised.
I overthrow customary patterns.
Everything I now take for granted
was once unknown to me,
just as my best friends
were once unknown to me.
I need not fear change.
Something good is awaiting
from every change.
~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

At the Gate of the Year

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'
And he replied,
'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

~Minnie Louise Harkins 1875-1957