Tag Archives: growth

And home

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Days start a little later here
but stretch out even longer –
plenty of time to grow, and keep growing,
from small seedlings into big plants,
swaying strongly in the strong wind,
taking what is given by the strong sun

I feel bee-like in my steady buzz
from task to task, taking strength
from every specimen of sturdy growth,
surprised to feel a slowdown in the evening  –
I had felt I could go on forever

In the process, I am learning home,
sharing of place, rhythm of days,
essence of Spirit that holds us
in our harmonious ways.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2023

Altar

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Today has been graceful,
its revelations gentle,
its tasks supportive of the higher learning
to which I’m called

I’m called to bring my efforts to the altar
and leave them there, for after all,
what use are they to me,
except I offer them?
And what can I receive
but what was made to fit me
by that same all good
with which I leave my gifts?

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2022

Taking a lesson

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These trees don’t ask
who will inhabit
the forest they will become

These trees don’t plan the canopy
or what will change
when their limbs join at the top
and seal out the sky

The undergrowth responds
to what’s here at this season,
this place in the cycle of succession

They will meet the changes
in the full on way they live,
as will I, as will I.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2021

Growing

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(from the virtual biking philosopher’s notebook)

Not that you know more things,
but what you’ve always known
you know more deeply,
know what tumbling concatenations follow
from one truth,
know more things it disallows
by being true

Not that you grow into something you weren’t,
but what you are, you keep becoming,
grander and more like yourself than ever,
just like these firs.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2020

Silver

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Today I imagined us silver,
silver and luminous,
growing more so
in the passage of years,
glowing more deeply
with that flowing liquid
that more and more fully
powers our being

This is the way to age —
as a tree ages —
this is the way to grow into ourselves,
dropping, with daily grace,
that which obstructs us,
comprised, more each moment,
of light.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2019

Discovery

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Joyful and relieved
to have abandoned
all my expectations,
I can delight in your colorful self,
your undetermined and undecided self,
the edges you have still to find,
your willingness to be
as yet unformed

I can rejoice that
none of this is up to me,
but all of it is wonderful,
masterwork of that which always
surpasses my imagination,
surprises my anticipation,
and holds it as a gift to all of us
the way you let yourself discover you.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2017

New Growth

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As old containers fall away,
we each may find
we’re more cohesive
than we knew,
and now, no longer blocked off
from the places where
we always longed to grow,
we’ll send our shoots out
bold and green

We’ll be so much more wild and thick
than how we had been told
we had to be,
we’ll twine with others
who had been forbidden,
we’ll make a thicket, a collective tree

And we’ll hold ourselves together
not by rules and condemnation,
but by the gracious tendrils of our truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2017

Fledging

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back deck with honeysuckle

The fledgling crow stood on the bench
for a long time, its eyes blinking,
its claws crooked on the planks,
its tail feathers stubby.
I watched it for a long time,
until its final stubby flight
into the grass by the fence

I watched another one later
(or perhaps the same one)
balancing on too-thin branches
in the brush pile — tentative shifting,
weighing the give of the branch
against the thrust of take-off,
hopping to equally flimsy branches,
getting ready to try again

We are so very much like these crows,
almost or maybe able to fly,
blinking for a long time
in the uncertainty of the tasks at hand,
lovingly watched over all the while.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2016

Faith

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faith2

No one else does it for you.
That’s OK —
This holy work
is what you’re made to do.
The you essence,
so pure in your mustard-seed core,
must draw in the life water
that makes it swell,
must split, and multiply
and open out
so bringing forth
everything you are

There is no turning back,
there is no giving up —
once started, your unfoldment
must continue
till you, too, bring forth precious seed,
spreading your blessing
wide across the land.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 27, 2015