Tag: Poetry
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feast: blessed are those who hunger
on longing & liminal space: a reflection, a poem, & a blessing “What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry upLike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.Or does it explode?” —“Harlem” by…
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unfiltered: dropping the inner commentary
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. …Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you…
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the invitation of our overwhelm: empathetic witnessing
a reflection, a poem, and a practice “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” ―Peter A. Levine Content warning: depression, pregnancy loss, anxiety, grief For much of my life, my sensitivity has felt like moving through an ultra-bright, sunlit world without sunglasses. When…
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autumn sage in spring
I needed to give my body some time to be with beauty amidst the horrors, so I stepped out into my backyard to feel my feet on the ground and to see what I could see. autumn sage in springby Lindsay L. O’ConnorThe autumn sage is blooming in spring, which leads me to believe she’s…
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portable silence: tethering to goodness
“…silence is above all a quality of the heart that can stay with us even in our conversations with others. It is a portable cell that we carry with us wherever we go. From it we speak to those in need and to it we return after our words have borne fruit.”—The Way of the…
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this is why it hurts
on belonging, fragmentation, and integration: a pondering, a poem, & a practice “If contemplation is about penetrating illusion and touching reality, why do we commiserate with others when they tell us about an experience that’s ‘disillusioned’ them? ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ we’ll say. ‘Please, let me comfort you.’ Surely it would be better to say,…
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living the questions
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot now be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the…
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mallard in the middle [depression in the group chat]
/ mallard in the middle [depression in the group chat] The mallard in the middlegets all the good sleep.Seven ducks slept in a rowa few yards from the creek near our house,conspicuous as a red balloonfloating in a blue sky.They looked so vulnerableuntil I learnedthey can allow half their brain to sleepwhile the other half…
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for the women
Happy Women’s History Month and happy International Women’s Day! This is a poem I wrote a few years ago. Ladies, this is for you, for me, for us: for the womenA social media post that went viralasked women what they would doif there were no men on the planetfor 24 hours.The answers would make you…