Slowly we start to learn
that we are sustained,
not by the things we produce,
but by the engagement
of our hands, the grasp
of our minds, the tenacity
with which we hold on
to the flowing life source –
the attention we pour in,
giving ourselves to the curiosity,
the work, the play, the follow through
that brings these things to light.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2021i
I will not wait to receive
a benediction from my God
Instead I will be the face, the front,
of my God’s wind, I will go forward
in the might of my God’s breath
I will know Love by loving,
I will know Life
by feeling the aliveness
that empowers me within,
I will know Truth
by being true to the imperative
that names my hope and purpose,
that is my God, my grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 11 2021
I start to see
that what’s forbidden
is a directionality –
seeking out what’s good for me
And that what satisfies
inclines the other way –
I find myself in seeking
what I’m good for
And what I’m good for
is being what I am,
and what I am
bears witness to what’s true,
and what is true is Life –
its uncontainable exuberance,
and Life is what I love,
and what loves me.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2021
The focus of my former life
is now a broken lens –
I can’t make sense of
what I used to strive for
I can’t make sense
of being right, of a life
comprised of choices –
best things, best ways, best buys,
best explanations
Now, what makes more sense to me
is simple noticing –
where I am, what is unfolding,
what signs of omnipresent Love
are here for me to see,
what is the step I’m called to take right now,
how can I give, right now,
what’s being asked of me.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2021
Early spring brings musings
on the nature of promises,
and the nature of promise
The first are given,
the second held within
And if the giver is reliable
the promises are kept,
and as the holder learns what’s in there,
promise blooms.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 18, 2021
All the stories you have heard
are not your story,
all the endings you may have thought
foreshadowed what would come of you
are not your ending
Pick up your tale – don’t let it
drag in the dust –
you aren’t ordained to go the way
you have been told befalls
everyone else,
and no one else is either
Pay attention – this is not a time to drift,
it’s not a time to fall,
It’s time to catch your upward lift,
time to embrace your all
Take in the new unfolding steps
as courage leads you –
This is your story, and the world’s –
Step forth – it needs you.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2021
It’s not about being right,
it’s not about winning
The omni-directionality
of the converging chorus
overcomes, with its sheer beauty,
any operatic sense
For you’ll find
you’d rather be part of it
than be exalted on your own –
you’d rather be an unnamed conduit
of this transforming light
than to be spotlighted,
called out as a star
You’d rather know
someone went home
feeling filled with brightness
and shared it with their family
and they all felt
delighted in and blessed
You’d rather know
this light is the current
that keeps everything going,
just as it always has
and always will.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 19, 2021
I can help you, I said,
and I knew this was true
though I had no thoughts prepared
(or maybe for that reason)
I can help you because,
obviously, I’m here,
and nothing’s ever put here to be helpless
Therefore I’ll find the way
my hope can reach you,
and what I’ve proved for me
will have a place for you
And the fact of reaching you
will bring elation,
enough to nourish me
just as it always does.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2021
Well, it would be the same hubris
to say I heard the call
but failed to answer
as to say
that only I was called
as if the calling
were a voice I could refuse,
as if, on hearing it,
there could still be anything else
I might prefer to do
as if there were a me
with any purpose or existence
beside the magnitude
of what I’d understand myself to be,
what I’d embody
in answering the call.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2020
At the darkening edges,
far, as it may seem, from embers’ warmth,
we may start to forget
what holds us all together
We may need to take a journey
back to where we are transformed,
burned but not consumed,
held up as torches,
where the constant fire that pours from us
becomes our definition
And we cease to squabble
about the forms we take,
or who has more potential
or what brought us down to ash,
because we know that all of us,
whenever we step out,
are caught up in the flame,
becoming light.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 14, 2020