Tag Archives: philosophy

“I Shall Dwell . . .”

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greenlake trees2

(questions)

Where do I live?
Do I live in dogma,
do I live in story?
Do I live in the rolling screen of memory?
Do I match constructs of my expectations
with the way things seem to be unfolding?
Do I try to make corrections?

What does it mean to live in Spirit?
What does it mean to live in Love?
Can I call this a house,
this place of comfort,
this felt experience of being loved?
Can I call this a house,
this consciousness of my delight
to stand here at the threshold
where we may see each other,
where we may meet,
Where we cross over?

©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2014

In the Tent of the Universe

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tent of universe

Oh, this life!
One thing I know —
Every separate thing
will come together
in some unimaginable arc.
Everything that seems so
out of whack
will still come round again,
in countless iterations, subtle shiftings,
till it turns out to be
the essential linchpin
of some delicious dimension
we’d never known before,
opening our sights,
vastly multiplying
the realms wherein we fly.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2014

Biking Philosophers

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sparkles on water

Well, she said,
Perhaps we’ve given up
on solving all the world’s problems
before eight o’clock in the morning.

Yes, I agreed,
In our maturity,
we have determined
there is no solving things
for someone else —
The only place
we may have traction
is with ourselves

Later, as I watch the swath of sparkles
spread across the water
underneath the sun,
I think: These sparkles are a dance
between my eyes and the bright light —
They engage and spin together
in the nexus of perception

I will come away dazzled.
The light will keep dancing
with each living thing that receives it.
We’ll see it sometimes,
and not be aware when we don’t.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2014

Photo by Heather Mulhern

Free Will

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free will

Actually, I never wanted
the fearsome choice,
the dread responsibility —
Didn’t want to have to pick a course
and take the consequence —
whatever unforeseen rewards
or punishments
might follow

And actually, I never could
employ self-help
to help myself:
Whatever resolutions I engaged
I would rebel against —
more stubborn, far,
than any force I had

I am delighted
to unweight myself,
to cast myself upon the current
of all that loves me,
Ever flowing rush of Spirit
filling all my field of being,
Bearing me along its will
like rainbows, and like waterfalls

I am happy
to be Spirit’s choice
and not my own,
Happy to be ever moving,
ever home.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2014

Tending the Field

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field sky

 

The most important field you tend
is your reality.

Our thoughts make up the world —
the lines we draw,
our expectations, hopes and fears,
conclusions,
Determine what flows out
along our dream of day

So what you’re thinking now
is never trivial.

I owe it to my world
to lift myself
from all the mindless loopings
and the tedious replays
of all the things I wish
had gone my way,
And free myself from worry
and the frivolous distractions
that I use to keep the gnawing dread away

It’s time to stand:
What we are
can no longer be subordinate
to patterns no one ever has desired.
We can own
the field we call our mind
and be inspired,
We can insist
that only what serves life
be permitted to exist.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 25, 2014

All the Answers

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squirrel

It’s OK
if you don’t believe the resolution.
The resolution scoops down
underneath all your doubts
and catches you up, whole.

It’s good that you don’t settle
for pat answers
that don’t include
the niggles and the questions,
the need, sometimes,
to be unfinished, complicated,
unexplained . . .

It’s important that you don’t
esteem the Allness
as just what may be showing
on the surface

There’s time.
There’s time for every little curl
to feel its center
and its code
and its potential,
There’s time for every world
to circle home.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2014

Ways of Knowing

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Things may be much larger
or much smaller
than we assume —
Maybe it’s a galaxy,
maybe a quark,
maybe the shake of a squirrel’s tail
among the boughs

Some instruments of knowing
are less foolproof
than we have been led to believe,
and indeed
we have been fooled for generations —
We have been duped
into throwing out
all ways of knowing,
all ways of measuring,
all ways of valuing
except the dollar
(and that, we’re told,
is out of our control)

And yet
We are not fools,
We do have ways of knowing
of our own
And we can use them
to understand
each one’s true value
and why we’re here
and what we now can do
to save the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2014

Paradigm Collapse

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In that weightlessness
before the house’s falling,
after the struts were pulled out
one by one,
the structure growing ever weaker
though we hadn’t noticed

(distracted as we were
by the eventually frantic
clang of loud music
and waving of hands,
garish colors paraded
ever more urgently
to keep us from paying attention)

But it gets to the point
where each strut, as it’s removed,
may be the last —
The structure is swaying,
soon to twist and crumple
and when we see it there
in that weightless moment
before the fall,
We start to realize
This all has been a dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 22, 2013


Living at the cambium

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I start to understand
living at the cambium —
that thin and vibrant layer
between structure and protection
where everything is new-born
and anything can change

I may have viewed my life
projected over time
as some determined specimen
which could be judged and graded
and would end

But here in this experience
of ever-new creation
in the eager greening 
before the form —
this place of generation
which pushes out the growing tips
and thrives,

There is no noun of me,
no stepping back for an assessment,
no self-image, nothing to defend,
just this new greenness,
this reverberating verb, 
the forming of a now that never ends.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 25, 2013


A new way of looking at patience

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Patience is knowing
that everything moves
in the rhythm of Life,
and every need is being met —
all the microscopic needs
in the give and take
that feeds each tiny mouth,
and the orchestrated needs
of larger systems —
great living networks
of realized mutual trust,
resulting in the intricately timed provision
of each response along the moving wave

And as this is the case,
Life’s essence operating
in every place,
it surely will continue
in the arc whereon you gaze,
anticipating some desired conclusion.
Grace is not capricious,
not the gain of luck or chance —
it is the rhythm,
fractally repeated,
present where you need it —
it is the constant motion
of Life’s defining dance.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2013