Anam Cara

To be enfolded anew

By the miracle of your being.

FOR THE TRAVELER

Every time you leave home,

Another road takes you

Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.

New places that have never seen you

Will startle a little at your entry.

Old places that know you well

Will pretend nothing

Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself

Alone in a different way,

More attentive now

To the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

You abroad; and how what meets you

Touches that part of the heart

That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune

To the timbre in some voice,

Opening a conversation

You want to take in

To where your longing

Has pressed hard enough

Inward, on some unsaid dark,

To create a crystal of insight

You could not have known

You needed

To illuminate

Your way.

When you travel,

A new silence

Goes with you,

And if you listen,

You will hear

What your heart would

Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:

Make sure, before you go,

To take the time

To bless your going forth,

To free your heart of ballast

So that the compass of your soul

Might direct you toward

The territories of spirit

Where you will discover

More of your hidden life,

And the urgencies

That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,

Gathered wisely into your inner ground;

That you may not waste the invitations

Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,

And live your time away to its fullest;

Return home more enriched, and free

To balance the gift of days which call you.

FOR A MOTHER-TO-BE

Nothing could have prepared

Your heart to open like this.

From beyond the skies and the stars

This echo arrived inside you

And started to pulse with life,

Each beat a tiny act of growth,

Traversing all our ancient shapes

On its way home to itself.

Once it began, you were no longer your own.

A new, more courageous you, offering itself

In a new way to a presence you can sense

But you have not seen or known.

It has made you feel alone

In a way you never knew before;

Everyone else sees only from the outside

What you feel and feed

With every fiber of your being.

Never have you traveled farther inward

Where words and thoughts become half-light

Unable to reach the fund of brightness

Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

Like some primeval moon,

Your soul brightens

The tides of essence

That flow to your child.

You know your life has changed forever,

For in all the days and years to come,

Distance will never be able to cut you off

From the one you now carry

For nine months under your heart.

May you be blessed with quiet confidence

That destiny will guide you and mind you.

May the emerging spirit of your child

Imbibe encouragement and joy

From the continuous music of your heart,

So that it can grow with ease,

Expectant of wonder and welcome

When its form is fully filled

And it makes its journey out

To see you and settle at last

Relieved, and glad in your arms.

FOR A NEW FATHER

As the shimmer of dawn transforms the night

Into a blush of color futured with delight,

The eyes of your new child awaken in you

A brightness that surprises your life.

Since the first stir of its secret becoming,

The echo of your child has lived inside you,

Strengthening through all its night of forming

Into a sure pulse of fostering music.

How quietly and gently that embryo-echo

Can womb in the bone of a man

And foster across the distance to the mother

A shadow-shelter around this fragile voyage.

Now as you behold your infant, you know

That this child has come from you and to you;

You feel the full force of a father’s desire

To protect and shelter.

Perhaps for the first time,

There awakens in you

A sense of your own mortality.

May your heart rest in the grace of the gift

And you sense how you have been called

Inside the dream of this new destiny.

May you be gentle and loving,

Clear and sure.

May you trust in the unseen providence

That has chosen you all to be a family.

May you stand sure on your ground

And know that every grace you need

Will unfold before you

Like all the mornings of your life.

FOR A FRIEND ON THE ARRIVAL OF ILLNESS

Now is the time of dark invitation

Beyond a frontier you did not expect;

Abruptly, your old life seems distant.

You barely noticed how each day opened

A path through fields never questioned,

Yet expected, deep down, to hold treasure.

Now your time on earth becomes full of threat;

Before your eyes your future shrinks.

You lived absorbed in the day-to-day,

So continuous with everything around you,

That you could forget you were separate;

Now this dark companion has come between you.

Distances have opened in your eyes.

You feel that against your will

A stranger has married your heart.

Nothing before has made you

Feel so isolated and lost.

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,

May grace come to restore you to balance.

May it shape a new space in your heart

To embrace this illness as a teacher

Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you find in yourself

A courageous hospitality