Weekly Reading

The Ocean Moving Steadily All Night
Stay with us.
Don’t sink to the bottom
like a fish going to sleep.
Be with the ocean moving
steadily all night,
not scattered like a rainstorm.
The spring we’re looking for is somewhere in this murkiness.
See the night-lights up there
traveling together, the candle awake in its gold dish.
Don’t slide into the cracks of the ground like spilled mercury.
When the full moon comes out,
look around.
~Rumi

Weekly Reading

Choice II
I do not respond
in predictable ways,
like a rat in a maze.

I am not controlled
by people or events.

I make conscious choices
that put me
in control of my life.

I think, then act,
and watch my life transform.

Spirit turns
the darkness before me
into light.

When blind to solutions at hand,
when the way seems blocked,
I trust divine intelligence
to reveal answers
and show the way
to paths I have not known.
~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

The Uses of Sorrow
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Ease
I am unhurried and relaxed.
I exude an aura
of peace and goodwill.

I know in spirit,there is only
the eternal now.

I do not force issues.
I let my goals and aspirations
unfold one at a time.

I accomplish all
that needs to be done
easily and efficiently.

I am in the right place
at the right time.

My body responds
to my sense of order
and perfect timing.

I enjoy each moment of ease,
this day.

~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

Love Poem With Toast
Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
~Miller Williams

Weekly 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 that 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

Weekly Reading

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
~Stephen Mitchell's translation of Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching