Round Four of Words that have Sustained - Lent 2022...Prayers and Possibilities...
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| Phraya Nakhon Cave, Sam Roi Yot National Park, Prachuap Khiri Khan. |
3/1To answer your question,
Yes.
You will die a few more deaths
before your final chapter.
You will stare at the ceiling of
one tomb or another, feel the
gushing roaring ache of
absence.
Don’t let fear become more than
the occasional tightness at the
back of your throat, a
fluttering in the ribcage.
The first death shaped your hands into keys
your shoulder blades into wings
and your heart into a book of poems
that will always remember
the way out.
The first death gave you Life.
Do not lay it down.
- Christa Wells
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| Posting a couple more shots of Phraya Nakhon Cave because it captures the mood so well. |
3/2
Keeping the heart open, even in hell, makes space for the Beloved. It is in the darkest nights of our souls, when all we know is that we know nothing, that the presence of the sacred may quietly well up, mingling with our pain and connecting us to a love that will never die.
Mirabai Starr, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (H/T Christa Wells)
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Old steps leading from Wat Phra Non up to Wat Doi KongMu, Maehongson. |
3/3A Prayer
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
- clarissa pinkola estes
While I agree with the last three lines of this poem, only the person going through the suffering/hard time gets to say that to themselves. No one else has the right or should be foolish enough to say that to another person. If they do, they deserve what they get in return!
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| Maehongson, view from the other angle of the previous photo. |
3/4In our day to day lives, we often show courage without realizing it. However, it is only when we are afraid that courage becomes a question. Courage is amazing because it can tap into the heart of fear, taking that frightened energy and turning it towards initiative, creativity, action and hope. When courage comes alive, imprisoning walls become frontiers of new possibility, difficulty becomes invitation and the heart comes into a new rhythm of trust and sureness. There are secret sources of courage inside every human heart; yet courage needs to be awakened in us. Courage is the spark that can become the flame of hope, lighting new and exciting pathways in what seemed to be dead, dark landscapes.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
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| I had lined up a few initial poems and prayers for this series of 'Words' as the last round ended - I am struck by how many of these initial ones speak to the courage/light/darkness we are witnessing in Ukraine. These are not the traditional sunflowers being posted in solidarity with Ukraine, but rather Tithonia diversifolia (sometimes called Mexican Sunflower or tree marigold) that blanket the hills in a few areas in North Thailand in November and December. |
3/5WAITING TO GO ON
It must be
we are waiting
for the perfect moment.
It must be
under all the struggle
we want to go on.
It must be,
that deep
down
we are creatures
getting ready
for when
we are needed.
It must be
that waiting
for the listening ear
or the appreciative word,
for the right woman,
or the right man,
or the right one,
or even
the right moment
just to ourselves,
-we are getting ready
to be ready
and nothing else-
Like this moment
just before
the evening light
arrives
working
by the kitchen
window,
sensing
a deep
down symmetry
in every
blessed thing.
The way
that everything
unbeknownst
to us
is preparing
to meet us too.
Just on the other
side of the door
someone
is about to knock
and our life
is just
about to change
and finally
after all these
years rehearsing,
behind
the curtain,
we might
just be
ready
to go on.
From ‘Waiting to Go On’: in ‘River Flow:
New and Selected Poems’
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
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| My friend Pan who is as gentle with people as he is with this old beach dog on the beach in Pranburi, Thailand. |
3/6
Be content to live an anonymous, unspectacular, misunderstood life among people...
Let Christ transfigure the darkness in ourselves & in the world.
Let there be great care to maintain the simplicity of presence...
Love what is obscure & little for there you will find Christ.
- Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2
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| Just downstream from the Maesagna waterfall, Maehongson |
3/7
When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.
This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.
-JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
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