what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
Prayer chair and shawl, 06/16
In the sweet dawn
I sit on the wet earth.
The Holy One comes.
She sniffs the grass, the lighting day,
lays languid at my feet.
She turns,
turns toward me and all the galaxies.
She smiles,
lifts her head and laughs,
laughs into the sky, her eyes sparkling at the fading stars,
lifts her head and laughs into the whole day before us.
I breath, gentle.
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/1/16
Moving Water (an excerpt)
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section, the feeling
disappears. Don’t let
others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.
Reach for the rope
of God.
—Rumi
When the sun sets – red – in the trees,
I lie in the new grass.
The cat comes, too.
Together, we sink into earth,
sniff the soft, green, blanket that holds us,
breathe in harmony.
We purr.
***
meb/02/2015
Overlooking the Bering Sea, Unalaska, AK
Life is the color of things:
of place, of thoughts, of people, of sky and trees.
(I have lived in gray, know that place well, for which I am grateful –
for its gift is to know, for the first time, the color of things).
Life is the color of things, and
it is good to breathe the riches of sky and earth,
of shadows across sky, of green grass that carries earth’s fragrance,
of long autumns and bright maples, of spring melting snow banks,
of a navy blue awakening, dawn.
The color of things lives in the eyes of friends, when sadness lurks,
when pain is not covered with dull happiness. The color of things, this gift, earth, and all
that is in it,the heart, and all that is in it.
meb/01/2016
My whole life I’ve been turning –
turning toward God.
However you have perceived this one life,
this one soul:
I have been turning, turning toward God.
I have turned through the ages,
I have turned for the ancestors,
I have turned out of sorrow and loneliness,
I have turned when I have been afraid to turn,
afraid I might fall, but still –
turning, turning.
I’ve been turning, turning toward God,
that silent One, the One I love I have not seen,
the One who holds the turning,
that turning toward God.
meb/12/2015 – Advent, 2015
