Tag: poetry

Turn the stones to peace

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

Sometimes, the various thoughts and messages I think I’d like to share feel rather like a swirling nebula, and the question is, where are the stars?! Where is that cloud of desires, feelings, ideas, and possibilities coalescing into a star, a message that’s like a unified point of light, shining bright and clear? Sometimes, these days, the intention, time, and energy required for star formation (as it were!) are beyond me …. but I do what I can to keep the creation spark alive!

And that’s why it’s a gift to rediscover stars – writings and poems from past years that hold the essence of a message that remains relevant to my heart, that speak light to my soul again, that could speak light out into the world, perhaps. I wanted to share one of those stars here, a poem I wrote in November 2017 – a time when my heart felt like it had somehow become full of stones, but I sure didn’t want to keep carrying them and so I desperately sought a healing, freeing practice.

The stones that the poem speaks of are stones that any of us could be carrying in our hearts for whatever reason – we’re human, and these stones, these feelings, these emotional, psychological, and spiritual experiences, are a part of our humanness. But there is a way to see more deeply into these things, to see them for what they are (and are not), and there is a way to set ourselves free, to “turn the stones to peace”. It might be that we need to “turn the stones to peace” over and over and over again, to set ourselves free over and over and over again. At least, this is true for me – I find I need to return to the practice, partly because I seem to be good at finding stones to carry again!

It can be intense, challenging, sometimes exhausting work, but also such healing and freeing work – what lightness and light it can bring, that we then carry with us, wherever we go and to whomever we meet.

And drawing the lens out further: What if this were not only an internal practice, but a communal practice that we learned (re-learned) to share and do together – and found peace, became free, together? To carry stones no more to our own hurt and others’ hurt, but turn them to peace, be free. Be free to be love to ourselves and one another.

Turn the stones to peace

These stones
I have carried in my heart
Resentment stones
Envy stones
Loneliness stones
Grief stones
Bitter stones
Sorrow stones
These stones
I have carried in my heart

I reach
inside
and I gather these stones
I hold them in my hands
rest them on my palms
lift my hands up
feel the weight of these stones
I see the stones
outside my heart
I see them for what they
are
emptiness
perception not whole
truth
As I see them
for what they
are
they fall into dust
and from the dust
transform into doves
who take wing

Robbed of their form
and their weight
given a whole
truth
stones become peace
my heart is light
I carry stones there
no more
I am free

Presence/Poetry

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

I haven’t forgotten I have a blog, nor have I forgotten the joy weaving words together brings me, but I have been seeking to discern where and how writing fits into this full to the brim season of my life – the career season, I guess! I still, and always will, consider writing as one of my first loves and one of my deepest callings. Sometimes, though, it’s been a neglected love, one that I needed to pick up from a shelf and dust off, rediscover anew. Or it’s a calling that’s gotten swamped amidst the multitude of other time and commitment choices I’ve made. Or it’s a gift I have too often left unopened or unshared …

I love the therapeutic work that I am engaged in, and it’s part of my life’s work, my calling – to listen, teach, serve, guide, counsel, be present, help people find the healing power within them – but writing has never stopped feeling as though it belongs in my life’s work too. The form and expression it takes just seems to keep evolving … and so the form it seems to be taking right now is journaling and poetry, putting my journaling into poem/prose form (free form, that is, free from any conventional style of rhythm and rhyme!). Somehow, poetry seems simpler to manage right now than a thought-piece or essay, too. And since I wrote multitudes of poems in my teens and twenties, returning to poem-form feels like coming home.

So, this blog offering is a poem drawn from more of my January retreat (at St. Benedict) journaling. A poem that feels like it weaves together the mosaic of intentions that shapes the deepest essence of  who and how I want to be in the work I do, the life I live … deep listening, loving speech, healing words, learning stillness, practicing the pause, holding presence, being present with Presence. Mindful speech, mindful silence.

These intentions are like vows – my ‘Presence in communication’ vows – vows that are sacred to me. And these are also vows offered to myself, my children, my friends, colleagues, clients, everyone I meet. I’m still only beginning to learn how to practice them and be them with mindful consistency across the many situations and interactions that come my way, but I am keeping them close at heart!

(And if you look in the wayback of my blog archives, I’ve carried these intentions, these vows – or they’ve carried me – for a while now, and they’ve only taken deeper root. They’re home, where they belong! I’m home in them …)

I think, too, that this poem just opened my eyes to something – that my calling is itself a mosaic, many parts of whole, as one! The intentions of belovedness and Presence hold this mosaic together.

Presence in Communication

The intention of my every day communication:
To carry silence with my communication,
to allow silence the place in my communication –
pauses before my words, rests while listening
whole listening
my own thoughts stilled
open to the silence behind the other’s words
the unspoken notes clear to my ear

My policy toward the spoken word:
Use only the words that are most necessary
With care, choose them well
Take a breath, take a sacred pause
better to enter into a space –
a space that allows the liberty to feel
into the right intent
from which the right words will
flow –
Right words will come
from the letting go of over-thinking
the search for them
surrendering into the flow
of Presence

Best of all, in all
tend presence, tend Presence
Presence speaks the best, says the most
and needs no words
to convey the meaning of love
to show another they are heard and known
If and when words fail –
for they do and will
accept this truth with grace –
If and when words fail –
remain present
With or without words
your presence is your
communication
of your essence

Deepen presence, deepen into it
become
intimate
with silence, stillness, sacred pauses, rests
deep listening
whole-soul listening not only to the words
but beyond the words
to the whole being of another

Listening with deep presence, quiet mind
from this well of deep Presence
mindful healing words
can be drawn to offer
like living water
But it is your presence still
that makes the water
of your words
Living