Poetry & Readings

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How … Read more

I Walk in Beauty – Navajo prayer/song

Beauty in front of me, Beauty behind me, Beauty Above me, Beauty below me, Beauty all around me, I walk in Beauty….. In the house of long life, there I wander. In the house of happiness, there I wander. Beauty before me, Beauty behind me, Beauty above me , Beauty below me, Beauty all around … Read more

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view – Pope Francis

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying … Read more

Just as the winged energy of delight – Ranier Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

Just as the winged energy of delight carried you over many chasms early on, now raise the daringly imagined arch holding up the astounding bridges. Miracle doesn’t lie only in the amazing living through and defeat of danger; miracles become miracles in the clear achievement that is earned. To work with things is not hubris … Read more

Resistance by Rev. Peter Friedrichs

Press the tender flesh of your knowing Against the steel door of your fear. Stay there, breathing, as its icy skin draws out the heat of your racing heart. Feel its resistance to the yes of your hopes, the imminent expiration of your dreams. You could have avoided this pain. You could have stayed safely … Read more

Carmel Point by Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads— Now the spoiler … Read more

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,    But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being … Read more

I Want to be Alive with You by Toko-Pa Turner

I want to be guided by older-ups. I want babies to be born where old people die. I want to be sandwiched in the middle of a messy togetherness. I want to be warned before I do something stupid. I want to be forgiven when I do it anyway. I want wisdom to be tapped … Read more

A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William E. Stafford

If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets … Read more