Anam Cara

Despite its huge inner significance for mind and soul, the home is also the locus of a poignant transience. In order to grow up, we have to learn to leave home. There is a beautiful short story by Liam O’Flaherty describing how a mother bird pushes her little ones out of the nest so that they might learn to fly. The wholeness of a home depends much on its ability to prepare its young to leave the nest and risk trusting their own wings to take them to unknown elsewheres, where they will have to build their individual nests. Eventually, parents encounter the challenge of dealing with the empty nest.

Home is where the heart is. It stands for the sure center where individual life is shaped and from where it journeys forth. What it ultimately intends is that each of its individuals would develop the capacity to be at home in themselves. This is something that is usually overlooked, but it is a vital requirement in the creativity and integrity of individual personality. It has to do with the essence of a person, their sense of their own inner ground. When a person is at home in his life, he always has a clear instinct about the shape of outer situations; even in the midst of confusion he can discern the traces of a path forward. When one is at home in oneself, one is integrated and enjoys a sense of balance and poise. In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is: the art of homecoming. AS A CHILD ENTERS THE WORLD

As I enter my new family,

May they be delighted

At how their kindness

Comes into blossom.

Unknown to me and them,

May I be exactly the one

To restore in their forlorn places

New vitality and promise.

May the hearts of others

Hear again the music

In the lost echoes

Of their neglected wonder.

If my destiny is sheltered,

May the grace of this privilege

Reach and bless the other infants

Who are destined for torn places.

If my destiny is bleak,

May I find in myself

A secret stillness

And tranquillity

Beneath the turmoil.

May my eyes never lose sight

Of why I have come here,

That I never be claimed

By the falsity of fear

Or eat the bread of bitterness.

In everything I do, think,

Feel, and say,

May I allow the light

Of the world I am leaving

To shine through and carry me home.

IN PRAISE OF THE EARTH

Let us bless

The imagination of the Earth.

That knew early the patience

To harness the mind of time,

Waited for the seas to warm,

Ready to welcome the emergence

Of things dreaming of voyaging

Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse

The growth until the face of the Earth

Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came

And sealed the Earth inside

An endless coma of cold,

The heart of the Earth held hope,

Storing fragments of memory,

Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth

That offers ground for home

And holds our feet firm

To walk in space open

To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence

And certainty of mountains:

Their sublime stillness,

Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden

Trusting the first warmth of spring

Until its black infinity of cells

Becomes charged with dream;

Then the silent, slow nurture

Of the seed’s self, coaxing it

To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth

That transfigures all

That has fallen

Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,

Opening to receive

Our worn forms

Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth

For all our sins against her:

For our violence and poisonings

Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us

The ancient clay,

Holding the memory of seasons,

The passion of the wind,

The fluency of water,

The warmth of fire,

The quiver-touch of the sun

And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,

To live to the full

The dream of the Earth

Who chose us to emerge

And incarnate its hidden night

In mind, spirit, and light.

FOR A MOTHER

Mother,

Your voice learning to soothe

Your new child

Was the first home-sound

We heard before we could see.

Your young eyes

Gazing on us

Was the first mirror

Where we glimpsed

What to be seen

Could mean.

Mother,

Your nearness tilled the air,

An umbilical garden for all the seeds

Of thought that stirred in our infant hearts.

You nurtured and fostered this space

To root all our quietly gathering intensity

That could grow nowhere else.

Mother,

Formed from the depths beneath your heart,

You know us from the inside out.

No deeds or seas or others

Could ever erase that.

FOR A FATHER

The longer we live,

The more of your presence

We find, laid down,

Weave upon weave

Within our lives.

The quiet constancy of your gentleness

Drew no attention to itself,

Yet filled our home

With a climate of kindness

Where each mind felt free

To seek its own direction.

As the fields of distance

Opened inside childhood,

Your presence was a sheltering tree

Where our fledgling hearts could rest.

The earth seemed to trust your hands

As they tilled the soil, put in the seed,

Gathered together the lonely stones.

Something in you loved to inquire

In the neighborhood of air,

Searching its transparent rooms

For the fallen glances of God.