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If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
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Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
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Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to anotherwhy dont you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I dont want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I dont want to sell my life for money, I dont even want to come in out of the rain.
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Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
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DONT HESITATE If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, dont hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, thats often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, dont be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
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Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.
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Let me keep company always with those who say Look! and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
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I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
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How wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints - all that glorious, temporary stuff.
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There is only one question; how to love this world.
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Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
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More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothingthe reason they can fly.
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How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?
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Congratulations, if you have changed.
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I dont know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.
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only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.
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And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
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There was only myselfand the world,and it was Iwho was leaving.
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I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.
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Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul. But isnt the return of spring and how it springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
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All I know is that "thank you" should appear somewhere.So just in case I can't findthe perfect place- "Thank you, thank you.
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ON THE BEACH On the beach, at dawn: four small stones clearly hugging each other. How many kinds of love might there be in the world, and how many formations might they make and who am I ever to imagine I could know such a marvelous business? When the sun broke it poured willingly its light over the stones that did not move, not at all, just as, to its always generous term, it shed its light on me, my own body that loves, equally, to hug another body.
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You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.
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PRAYING It doesnt have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and dont try to make them elaborate, this isnt a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
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And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
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I give them- one, two, three, four- the kiss of courtesy, of sweet thanks,of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.May they sleep well. May they soften.But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.I will not give them the responsability for my life.
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THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER As long as youre dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.
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Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough.
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What lay on the road was no mere handful of snake. It was the copperhead at last, golden under the street lamp. I hope to see everything in this world before I die.
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Above the modest house and the palacethe same darkness.Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.Above the child who will recover and the child who will not recover, the same energies roll forward, from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.I bow down.
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Let me keep my distance, always, from thosewho think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,and bow their heads.
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Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
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determined to do the only thing you could do determined to save the only life you could save.
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Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
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STORAGE When I moved from one house to another there were many things I had no room for. What does one do? I rented a storage space. And filled it. Years passed. Occasionally I went there and looked in, but nothing happened, not a single twinge of the heart. As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. So one day I undid the lock and called the trash man. He took everything. I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothingthe reason they can fly.
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whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things
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Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe thats their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
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This morningtwo mockingbirdsin the green fieldwere spinning and tossingthe white ribbonsof their songsinto the air.I had nothingbetter to dothan listen.I mean thisseriously.
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How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance say, between Clapps Pond and me vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything.
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I had believed something probably not true, yet it was wonderful to have believed it.
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I dont know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?
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For the birds who own nothingthe reason they can fly.
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What is my name, o what is my name that I may offer it back to the beautiful world? Have I walked long enough where the sea breaks raspingly all day and all night upon the pale sand?
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Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone? Well, there is time left fields everywhere invite you into them.
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I WAKE CLOSE TO MORNING Why do people keep asking to see Gods identity papers when the darkness opening into morning is more than enough? Certainly any god might turn away in disgust. Think of Sheba approaching the kingdom of Solomon. Do you think she had to ask, Is this the place?
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Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the fields and the freshness of the oceans which you have made, and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness those exacting and wonderful words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying: Follow me.
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I know a lot of fancy words. I tear them from my heart and my tongue. Then I pray.
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We shake with joy, we shake with grief.What a time they have, these twohoused as they are in the same body.
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Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?
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I know someone who kisses the way a flower opens, but more rapidly.Flowers are sweet. They have short, beatific lives. They offer much pleasure. There is nothing in this world that can be said against them. Sad, isnt, that all they can kiss is the air. Yes, yes! We are the lucky ones.
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I know several lives worth living.
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there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do determined to save the only life you could save.
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FOR TOM SHAW S.S.J.E. (19452014) Where has this cold come from? It comes from the death of your friend. Will I always, from now on, be this cold? No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you. What is the reason for it? Wasnt your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?
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Whoever shall be guided so far towards the mysteries of love, by contemplating beautiful things rightly in due order, is approaching the last grade. Suddenly he will behold a beauty marvellous in its nature, that very Beauty, Socrates, for the sake of which all the earlier hardships had been borne: in the first place, everlasting, and never being born nor perishing, neither increasing nor diminishing; secondly, not beautiful here and ugly there, not beautiful now and ugly then, not beautiful in one direction and ugly in another direction, not beautiful in one place and ugly in another place. Again, this beauty will not show itself like a face or hands or any bodily thing at all, nor as a discourse or a science, nor indeed as residing in anything, as in a living creature or in earth or heaven or anything else, but being by itself with itself always in simplicity; while all the beautiful things elsewhere partake of this beauty in such manner, that when they are born and perish it becomes neither less nor more and nothing at all happens to it...
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What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself. Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to. That was many years ago. Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty. I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart. I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile. They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another). And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is. I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger. And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
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How God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable. But holiness is visible, entirely. Its wonderful to walk along like that, thought not the usual intention to reach an answer but merely drifting.
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Sometimes there are no rules.
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I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.
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am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.
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