Anam Cara

Have the courage for a new approach to time;

Allow it to slow until you find freedom

To draw alongside the mystery you hold

And befriend your own beauty of soul.

Now is the time to enjoy your heart’s desire,

To live the dreams you’ve waited for,

To awaken the depths beyond your work

And enter into your infinite source.

FOR SOMEONE AWAKENING TO THE TRAUMA OF HIS OR HER PAST

For everything under the sun there is a time.

This is the season of your awkward harvesting,

When pain takes you where you would rather not go,

Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place

You had forgotten you knew from the inside out;

And a time when that bitter tree was planted

That has grown always invisibly beside you

And whose branches your awakened hands

Now long to disentangle from your heart.

You are coming to see how your looking often darkened

When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love,

How deep down your eyes were always owned by something

That faced them through a dark fester of thorns

Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong;

You could only see what touched you as already torn.

Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.

And your memory is ready to show you everything,

Having waited all these years for you to return and know.

Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.

You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering

And according to your readiness, everything will open.

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide

Who can accompany you through the fear and grief

Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.

As your tears fall over that wounded place,

May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.

May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound

So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,

Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,

And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.

ON THE DEATH OF THE BELOVED

Though we need to weep your loss,

You dwell in that safe place in our hearts

Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn

Brightening over our lives,

Awakening beneath the dark

A further adventure of color.

The sound of your voice

Found for us

A new music

That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze

Quickened in the joy of its being;

You placed smiles like flowers

On the altar of the heart.

Your mind always sparkled

With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,

Your spirit was alive, awake, complete.

We look toward each other no longer

From the old distance of our names;

Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,

As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,

We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,

Smiling back at us from within everything

To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,

Where we would grow lonely without you.

You would want us to find you in presence,

Beside us when beauty brightens,

When kindness glows

And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,

Darkest winter has turned to spring;

May this dark grief flower with hope

In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love

Until we see your beautiful face again

In that land where there is no more separation,

Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,

And where we will never lose you again.

FOR SOMEONE WHO DID YOU WRONG

Though its way is to strike

In a dumb rhythm,

Stroke upon stroke,

As though the heart

Were an anvil,

The hurt you sent

Had a mind of its own.

Something in you knew

Exactly how to shape it,

To hit the target,

Slipping into the heart

Through some wound-window

Left open since childhood.

While it struck outside,

It burrowed inside,

Made tunnels through

Every ground of confidence.

For days, it would lie still

Until a thought would start it.

Meanwhile, you forgot,

Went on with things

And never even knew

How that perfect

Shape of hurt

Still continued to work.

Now a new kindness

Seems to have entered time

And I can see how that hurt

Has schooled my heart

In a compassion I would

Otherwise have never learned.

Somehow now

I have begun to glimpse

The unexpected fruit

Your dark gift had planted

And I thank you

For your unknown work.

AFTER A DESTRUCTIVE ENCOUNTER

Now that you have entered with an open heart

Into a complex and fragile situation,

Hoping with patience and respect

To tread softly over sore ground in order

That somewhere beneath the raw estrangement

Some fresh spring of healing might be coaxed

To release the grace for a new journey

Beyond repetition and judgment,

And have achieved nothing of that,

But emerged helpless, and with added hurt…

Withdraw for a while into your own tranquillity,

Loosen from your heart the new fester.

Free yourself of the wounded gaze

That is not yet able to see you.

Recognize your responsibility for the past.

Don’t allow your sense of yourself to wilt.