To see the brilliance
of a million dancing stars
you must sit still,
in the darkness and cold,
and be filled
with wonder and awe and joy.

I want to dance
or lie in the grace
but its dark
so dark you can see,
really see,
only what lies above –
the brilliance
of a million dancing stars.

And so I stand
in the dark and cold
in wonder and awe and joy,
and I raise my head,
stretch open my arms,
and whisper thank you
for the gift of the brilliance
of a million dancing stars.

Poetry speaks
of the Holy
in a way
Prose can’t.

The words flow,
like birds
through the air,
and speak a deeper truth,
but only after.

Love rises,
to fill our soul,
reminding us of joy and a peace
no one can take away.

We know again
the whisper of
the sacred promise,
needing few words
to say Amen.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture, Jeremiah 6:16, rendered as a poem.

Thus says the Lord:
Stand at the crossroads,
look,
ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way lies;
walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.

Prayer, with words,
is just us talking to ourselves.

In stillness we float
and rise upon
the thermals of Grace.

The lists of needs,
and concerns,
and wants,
is not for God.

In stillness we connect
with the rhythm of Breathe
that knows our every desire.

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
repeated a thousand times…
no

In stillness,
eat,
drink,
and be one with All.

Eliot was right
we do come home
albeit from an unfamiliar way,
and know ourselves once again.

We find,
before the humiliations of life
that so thoroughly shut us down,
joy, creativity, play, and wonder.

Pain, darkness, failure, fear –
this is the unfamiliar path, the way.

Opening to pain and darkness
and the failures and fears of life,
we can, by choosing,
remove the heavy scales we carry
that keep light in.

In stillness, and in silence,
and in being attentive
to the beauty off a single blade of grass,
or the magic of a pine tree
reaching for the sun,
or a covey of quail walking fast,
we can come home (again)
to that place of deepest love
that gives rise to
joy, creativity, play, and wonder.

Utter beauty
sitting at land’s edge
nothing but sun
and the dazzling blues
of the ocean
stretching before you.

To sit, open to the mystery,
and watch a bird
glide upon a thermal
below you, rising,
now eye to eye,
and then beyond.

The blues – sapphire, topaz, aquamarine –
the white sparkle of the sun’s path toward you
white and blue, the straight line
where they meet curving before you.

In the distance, far below,
white waves crashing on a beach,
black rocks, like dots
encircled with foam.

This is my work,
for this and every day,
to sit in beauty,
utter beauty,
and like the blues of the ocean,
to dazzle.

(I’ve decided to take a ‘brief’ break from the reflections on St. Romuald’s Brief Rule. Here’s a poem I wrote while on retreat in Big Sur, CA.)

To sit all day
facing the sun,
the warmth of it
burning the skin on my face.

Then to turn,
by instinct or invitation,
to face another way,
and there, unbidden,
large above the green hills,
the moon,
laughing at me:
“Here I am!”

And I
laugh back:
“Here I am!”

Here
I
am!