Poems

(Author Unknown)

Once there were two women

Who never knew each other.

One you do not remember,

The other you call mother.

Two different lives

Shaped to make yours one.

One became your guiding star,

The other became your sun.

The first gave you life

And the second taught you to live it.

The first gave you a need for love

And the second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality,

The other gave you a name.

One gave you a seed of talent,

The other gave you an aim.

One gave you emotions,

The other calmed your fears.

One saw your first sweet smile,

The other dried your tears.

One gave you up —

It was all that she could do.

The other prayed for a child

And God led her straight to you.

And now you ask me

Through your tears,

The age-old question

Through the years:

Heredity or environment

Which are you the product of?

Neither, my darling — neither,

Just two different kinds of love

Not flesh of my flesh

Nor bone of my bone,

But still miraculously my own.

Never forget for a single minute,

You didn’t grow under my heart

But in it.

– Fleur Conkling Heyliger

“Each person is no simple, one-dimensional self. There is a labyrinth within our soul. What we think and desire often comes into conflict with what we do. Below the surface of our conscious awareness, a vast, unknown rootage determines our actions. The unconscious is a powerful and continuous presence. Every life lives out of and struggles with this inner night, which cast it’s challenging and fecund shadows over everything we do and think and feel. We are earthen vessels that hold the treasure. Yet, aspects of the treasure are darker and more dangerous than we allow ourselves to imagine. But, when the unconscious becomes illuminated, it’s darker forces no longer hold us prisoner.”

-John O’Donohue

Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effort fully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action.

Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything!” — and what an everything he lived through — then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.

Delight in the age-salted man on the street corner waiting for the light to change, his age-salted dog beside him, each inclined toward the other with the angular subtlety of absolute devotion.

Delight in the little girl zooming past you on her little bicycle, this fierce emissary of the future, rainbow tassels waving from her handlebars and a hundred beaded braids spilling from her golden helmet.

Delight in the snail taking an afternoon to traverse the abyssal crack in the sidewalk for the sake of pasturing on a single blade of grass.

Delight in the tiny new leaf, so shy and so shamelessly lush, unfurling from the crooked stem of the parched geranium.

Lara Seven Gryffn

The shape of each soul is different; spiritual clothing one person wears can never fit the soul of another. Each destiny has a unique curvature and must find its own spiritual belonging and direction. I’m a spiritual search is too intense and hungry the soul stays hidden. The soul was never meant to be seen completely. Celtic mysticism recognizes that rather than trying to expose the soul or offer it our fragile care we should let the soul find us and care for us. Then, when you’re soul awakens, your destiny becomes urgent with creativity. – John O’Donohue

“You don’t fear people whose story you know.”

“Real listening always brings people closer together.”

“Trust that meaningful conversations can always change your world.”

Meg Wheatley