Spirit Poems

Mary Oliver challenges us to sense deeply into the mystery. Mary Oliver’s   “At the River Clarion” I don’t know who God is exactly. But I’ll tell you this. I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking. Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say, and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water. And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying. Said the river I am part of holiness. And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water. I’d been to the river before, a few times. Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly. You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day. You don’t hear them at all if self-hood  has stuffed your ears. And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through all the traffic, the ambition. 2. If God exists he isn’t just butter and good luck. He’s also th

“Abide” by Larry Smith I can recall this term “abide” from my childhood while standing in church and joining choir and congregation belting out “Abide with Me.” It was a term my father used at rare times when talking about troubles and troubled family or neighbors. “We just have to love and abide with them.” I didn’t really grasp its meaning…something like “accept” them for what they were or are. But at other times the word meant “accept and obey the rules and regulations.” I couldn’t find the love in that, except when it meant with God. As I matured and went off to college where we quietly learned to question everything, I began to doubt simple faith and to question the idea of “abiding” with things. During the time of the Vietnam War, I stopped abiding with our government policies and worked actively to change our acts of aggression in war, at home, and eventually in myself through spiritual work.  This ongoing struggle with “abiding” has led me into my 70’s now where I

Peace is This Moment Without Judgment  --Dorothy Hunt ​ Do you think peace requires an end to war? Or tigers eating only vegetables? Does peace require an absence from your boss, your spouse, yourself?... Do you think peace will come some other place than here? Some other time than Now? In some other heart than yours?  ​ Peace is this moment without judgment. That is all. This moment in the Heart-space where everything that is is welcome. Peace is this moment without thinking that it should be some other way, that you should feel some other thing, that your life should unfold according to your plans.  ​ Peace is this moment without judgment, this moment in the heart-space where everything that is is welcome.

SPIRIT  POEMS