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

Reading

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
~Marianne Williamson

Reading

There are endless reasons why someone or some situation might be “bad for you.” Subtle-but-perpetual criticism, toxic complaining, disconnection, narcissistic energy suckers, sheer boredom… Take your pick of vibes that you’d rather not be around. But a key reason that situations can be bad for you isn’t necessarily because of what a person or circumstance does “to you” — it’s how you will have to conform to the situation. The hurt happens when you shrink. You will have to say... less, dull your shine, pull in your power. You will play smaller, act dumber, mince your words. You will restrain your magnificence — out of fear, or out of logic, or out of the intelligence to survive. So it’s not about them, it’s about your response to them. The next opportunity to meet, to work, to dine, to interact, to kiss, to speak, to spend, to serve (no matter how shiny, sexy, lucrative, coveted, necessary, obligatory or useful it may seem), ask yourself this: Will I have to shrink to make this work? Or Is this a place where I can expand? Check your logic and call on your courage. Your heart’s intelligence will guide you. Hang out where you can unfurl.
~Danielle LaPorte

Reading

Everything you take for granted is a blessing.
Everything you fear is a friend in disguise.
Everything you want is a part of you.
Everything you hate you hate about yourself.
Everything you own does not define you. ...
Everything you feel is the only Truth there is to know.
Everything you wish for is already on its way to you.
Everything you think creates your life.
Everything you seek for you will find.
Everything you resist will stick around.
Everything you let go of stays if it’s supposed to.
Everything you need is right where you are.

Every time you bless another your bless yourself.
Every time you blame another you lose your power.
Every time you think you can, you can.
Every time you fall you must get up and try again.
Every time you cry you’re one tear closer to joy.
Every time you ask for forgiveness, all you have to do is forgive yourself.
Everyone you see is your reflection.
Everyone you know mirrors you.
Everyone wants to be happy.
Everyone wants to live in joy.
Everyone seeks a higher purpose.
Everyone breathes the same breath.
Everyone needs love to survive.
Everyone has a purpose to fulfill.
Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
We just get caught up in labels, names, skin color and religion.
Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
No one wants to feel the pain.
Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
Everyone is dying for love to remain.”
- Jackson Kiddard

Reading

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running,
to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving."
~Saint Francis De Sales

Reading

Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light –good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver ~

Reading

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,...
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor. Welcome
and entertain them all! Even if they're a
crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep
your house empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably. He may be
clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite
them in. Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide
from beyond.
~ Rumi ~

Reading

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.
...

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
~Rabindranath Tagore

Reading

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Don’t talk or do – just hear me. Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and... Billy Graham in the same newspaper. And I can do for myself; I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy. But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling. And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what’s behind them. Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes, for some people – because God is mute, and he doesn’t give advice or try to fix things. God just listens and lets you work it out for yourself. So please listen, and just hear me. And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn – and I will listen to you.
~Gary Jones

Reading

The real reason that some people are bad for you. There are endless reasons why someone or some situation might be “bad for you.” Subtle-but-perpetual criticism, toxic complaining, disconnection, narcissistic energy suckers, sheer boredom… Take your pick of vibes that you’d rather not be around. But a key reason that situations can be bad for you isn’t necessarily because of what a person or circumstance does “to you” — it’s how you will have to conform to the situation. The ...hurt happens when you shrink. You will have to say less, dull your shine, pull in your power. You will play smaller, act dumber, mince your words. You will restrain your magnificence — out of fear, or out of logic, or out of the intelligence to survive. So it’s not about them, it’s about your response to them. The next opportunity to meet, to work, to dine, to interact, to kiss, to speak, to spend, to serve (no matter how shiny, sexy, lucrative, coveted, necessary, obligatory or useful it may seem), ask yourself this: Will I have to shrink to make this work? Or Is this a place where I can expand? Check your logic and call on your courage. Your heart’s intelligence will guide you. Hang out where you can unfurl.
~Danielle LaPorte

Reading

Paradox
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less.
...

We buy more, but enjoy less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We’ve added years to life not life to years.
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.
We conquered outer space but not inner space.
We’ve done larger things, but not better things.
We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.
We accomplish less.
We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.
We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom.
A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
~Jeff Dickson

Reading

Limitless

Sun says, “Be your own
illumination.” Wren says,
“Sing your heart out,...
all day long.” Stream says,
“Do not stop for any
obstacle.” Oak says,
“When the wind blows,
bend easily, and trust
your roots to hold.”
Stars say, “What you see
is one small slice of a
single modest galaxy.
Remember that vastness
cannot be grasped by mind.”
Ant says, “Small does not
mean powerless.” Silence
says nothing. In the quiet,
everything comes clear.
I say, “Limitless.”
I say, “Yes.”
~Danna Faulds

Reading

Allow
There is no controlling life....
Try corralling a lightening bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in -
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
~Dana Faulds

Reading

"Darkness”
- The Necessity of Darkness
The next time you are feeling spiritually dark, remember that our hearts started beating in the darkness of the womb, seeds germinate in the darkness of the earth, and the earth rests in the darkness of winter so that spring can return. We all need fallow time. Darkness is a gift – it’s a great open space in which anything can happen. Surrender to it and the light will return.
~Mary Oliver

Reading

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.
~Pesha Joyce Gertler

Reading

Mornings at Blackwater
For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

that the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what will be, darling citizen.

So come to the pond,

or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live

your life.

~Mary Oliver

Reading

 "May the sun bring you energy by day,

  May the moon softly restore you by night,

  May the rain wash away your worries,

  May the breeze blow new strength into your being.

  May you walk gently through the world

    and know its beauty all the days of your life.“

                                     Apache Blessing

Reading

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest i...n the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry

Reading

Awakening Now

Why wait for your awakening?...
Do you value your reasons for staying small
more than the light shining through the open door?
Forgive yourself,
Forgive yourself.
Now is the only time you have to be whole.
Now.
Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.
Please, oh please, don't continue to believe
in your stories of deficiency and failure.
This is the day of your awakening.
~Dana Faulds

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

Reading

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts,
the depths where neither sin nor desire can reach,
the person that each one is in God's eyes.
If only they could see themselves as they really are.
If only we could see each other that way,...
there would be no reason for war, for hatred, for cruelty ...
I suppose the big problem would be that
we would fall down and worship each other.

- Thomas Merton

Reading

May I be mentally happy,
May I be physically happy,
May I be safe,
May I be peaceful and at ease.

reading

Miracles In The Minutia

Tiny, little specks of
white flecks…
flowers poking
through the crevice
of the public transportation train station.

I was filled with judgment
until that moment…
the things that were not going right,
the person who had not set me up
for success…
the list of my complaints long.
Until that moment.

The flowers were not complaining
that they had to grow
in a crack,
in a crevice
on the edge of concrete
at a station
instead of in a beautiful field
with room to breathe and grow.

They were just being flowers.
Being beautiful
whether anyone cared
or noticed
at all.

I was one big complaint…
until that moment…
when i stooped down
and touched their magnificence
and was humbled to my core.

julia butterfly hill

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

Reading

Once you begin to acknowledge random acts of kindness - both the ones you have received and the ones you have given - you can no longer believe that what you do does not matter.
Dawna Markova

Reading

Love After Love

The time will come ...
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~ Derek Walcott

Reading

Snow Day

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with - some will be delighted to hear -

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and - clap your hands - the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

~Billy Collins

Yoga for Snow Shovelers

Kula Yoga will meet tonight!

9am Lounge Act and 12pm High Noon will not meet on Feb 2

Reading

Such Singing in the Wild Branches (2003)

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

— Mary Oliver

reading

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 the 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

reading

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.

And nothing happens!
Nothing...Silence...Waves...

Nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

 ~Juan Ramon Jiménez
translated by Robert Bly

Yoga will not meet today - Friday January 9