Blue Ridge Parkway NC; Photo: July04Girl
I don’t know if I can
I don’t know if I can’t
My life flows in the spaces
Between heart and mind
As I wait to unfold
Into what will evolve
Around corners
Behind bumps
Where possibility
Stands.
Possibility
inspiration
Think Deeply
Think deeply about life.
Hold people closely, gently, in your heart.
Think deeply of the things that nourish:
Care and hope, compassion, truth, light.
Think deeply about what you know
And what you still would like to find out knowledge of.
Think deeply of the seeds you plant
In your soul’s soil
In others’.
Think deeply of the past and all its lessons
Of the way it can shape future histories
Or repeat woe.
Think deeply of the power of both joy and sorrow
Of the choices that can lead to more of both
And which one matters more.
Think deeply of the path you walk
The roads you pave for children and their children’s children
For this Earth.
Think deeply of all this
And think beyond it
Yet above and through and in between all of this
Thinking
Breathe in light
Breathe out hope
Offer comfort
Cultivate love.
By Buddha Doodles
For The Daily Post
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In The Vivid Light I See
Photo: Kristin Manson
◊
And in the vivid light
I see
People divided
Anger, glee.
As in the storms of
Right or wrong
The spaces in between
Are shorn.
◊
Confusion swirls
Known facts to eddies.
Certitude dyes
Friends into enemies.
◊
I see the children’s eyes
Bewildered
As lessons taught to them
Turn riddles:
“Be kind” but watch the adults bully.
“Be calm” but let grown-ups live cruelly.
“Be patient” yet role models tantrum.
“Don’t fight” as those who said
Not to
Attack, throw barbs, play foul
Speak awful.
◊
Their little foreheads crease
With frowns
Which do they follow:
Said, or done?
◊
And
In their vivid light
Do see
The path glows clear
A road to be.
Past time to wash away
The livid rage
Recall the lessons
Of their age:
Hold space to listen
Pace to learn
Revisit patience
Drop hate
Stop spurn.
For The Daily Post
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A Hope To Quicken
There’s a quickening of energies around the world.
Like all currencies, energy itself is neutral–it is what’s attached to it and how it is used that qualifies it into positive or not so, into what builds or what destroys, what mends or inflicts more wounding.
The Earth itself still rotates in the same general blinding speed it had for millennia too numerous to grasp. It hurtles through dark space with indescribable abandon, tethered by invisible forces to the star that keeps us all alive.
The overall mechanics of life and gravity hasn’t changed. Our awareness of it may have. Should.
With energies accelerated, we feel the rushed pulse of days, sometimes of mere moments. We sense the rotation of possibility, the immense power that can be harnessed, the twirl of time.
All is moving, quickened by both ignorance and understanding.
What we do with it–with the potential–is up to us.
Do we let slip down the slippery slopes of power-hunger, fear, and divisiveness … or do we harness good to raise our mutual consciousness, our moral compass, our social empathy to the reality that we are and always have been, One?
Do we take the historically familiar roads of vilifying those we do not care to get to know, of quantifying suffering of others as less painful and less necessary to end … Or do we truly recognize that hunger is still hunger, pain is pain, sorrow is more sorrow, that hate and violence beget only more of same? Do we resolve to do differently, not ‘again’ but in new ways?
Life has quickened. Bits of information spin around the globe in speeds now faster than the Earth itself. We are no longer separated by illusion.
Open eyes see clearly now.
We can, should, understand:
All. Is. One.
For The Daily Post
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Birth of Hope
“I didn’t think it was possible,” she said. Her hand hovered close over her heart, a tremor perhaps mirroring the flutter inside. “I never dared to even hope.”
A budding of something long buried illuminated her face, softened the crows’ feet around her eyes, smoothed a line of worry that had etched itself, preemptive and ever-wary, onto her forehead.
It’s been such a very long road.
“Can you believe it? At my age?” She shook her head, amazed.
She lowered herself to the couch and patted her own knee in self-comfort or maybe to convince herself that she was real and wasn’t dreaming.
Her voice whispered wonder. “He loved it. Bought it on the spot. My baby. My first sculpture, sold.”
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Above all, Love.
Breathe now
The light
That dances on the pavement
Filters between branches of bare trees
From winter sky.
Breathe now
Because the truth
Remains
In spite
Of images
Or imaginings
Of misplaced
Amplified
Fear.
Breathe …
Because above all,
Love.
Of life
Of nature
Earth
All babies
Freedom
Oxygen and gravity.
Love of
Heart strings and connection
Of compassion
And
The ties that bind.
Photo by A.Katz
For The Daily Post
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Life’s Craft
Photo Credit: E.F.
May your life be your craft.
Well defined.
Aged and fine.
May your life be your craft.
Practiced, shared
Worked and honed.
May your life be your craft.
Filled with heart
Buoyed by joy
Lit with hope
Let to grow.
May your life be your craft.
Skilled,
Perfected,
Helpful,
Whole.
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Speak up, Live Truth.
Replace your fretting with a voice.
Speak up
About your truth.
Resist the wish to curl up under pillows
To avoid
Unpleasantness
Conflict
Misunderstanding.
Push against the wish to look the other way
When humans
Someplace ‘other’ than your home
Flee injustice.
Replace apathy or indifference
With empathy.
Replace a narrow vision
With expansion of your heart:
There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ unless you choose to emulate
Those who seek to divide and control
Instead of heal.
Replace your fear of the unknown
Your terror of the ‘stranger’
Whose lives, religion, culture
You don’t understand …
With the wisdom that we are
And never stopped to be
First and foremost human
And our children are as
Precious
As those born in other lands.
Replace the need to marginalize,
With the understanding that the only margins are those
We choose to accept
Or follow.
Replace the lumping of the ‘other’
Into warring words and baleful messages,
With actually seeing the individuals:
They are no different than you,
No less in need of help in times of crisis
They are no more inherently capable of hate
Than you.
Reject rhetoric that equates your safety
With the deprivation
Of another.
Replace it
With the facts:
We are stronger together
Than we ever can be
In division.
We are better together
Than we ever can be
In isolation.
We are safer in compassion
Than we ever can be
In prejudice or xenophobia.
We are all that we will nourish.
Speak up.
Let us help those who do not yet know truth,
See it
Hear it
Understand.
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“I tried and I tried”
Everything is harder for this little one.
Her body doesn’t quite know how to calm itself. Her hands don’t always know the extent of their reach. She trips. She falls. She bumps into. She upsets the cup, the plate, the markers on the desk. It takes her longer to climb up a flight of stairs. She needs help tackling them going down. Her mouth doesn’t quite make sounds as easily as others’ can: words come out jumbled, not always the right sounds or meaning, often in a mismatched grammar and word order. Food gets messy. Swallowing’s tricky. She gags. She coughs.
But she tries.
Oh, boy, she tries.
And tries.
And tries.
She’s a perfectionist, too.
Indomitable.
Determination personified.
Everything requires repetition. Still she tries again. Again. Again. She shakes her head at any suggestion she accept the unperfected.
“I do more time,” she insists, sometimes in tears but with no less conviction.
And she does. ‘More time’ and time again and then again and then some.
And slowly, sometimes out of the mist of helpless frustration and gritted teeth and hugs and endless patience — she succeeds.
A circle that closes. A list of items in a category. An idea expressed. A multisyllabic word with no sounds missing. A full sentence with all words in attendance. A coat pulled on without assistance. A triangle traced. A tower of blocks. A pattern of beads. A banana that peels without the insides getting mashed. A sip of apple juice from an unaided cup, no spill, no cough.
“I tried and I tried,” she beams. Each time anew. Sometimes with tears still glistening from the last attempt that didn’t quite get up to her own standards. Each time there’s fire in her eyes.
“I told you I can!”
Indeed you had.
Indeed you can.
Hats off, little one.
Every. Single. Time.
For The Daily Post
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Un-Hide
Photo Credit: O.A.
You do not need to hide
Your pain
Your worry.
You do not need to stash away
The dreams
The stories.
You do not need to hold your tongue
Pretend away your feelings
Ignore what you already know,
Just to be
Someone you are not
For me
For show
For others.
You do not need to wrap parts of yourself
In secrecy
Or silence.
It is okay.
Un-hide.
I understand.
Even if some do not know, and
May need more time,
To see
How you’re the light
Within the deepest darkness.
For The Daily Post
Na'ama Yehuda 
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