Sometimes I see you as a frightened young child
With shining eyes and a confused expression,
Looking everywhere for help, for love,
For a safe peaceful space.
I feel as much compassion for you
As I would for that child in distress.
Doesn’t your heart long to hold that frightened child — you —
Hugging gently, but firmly,
Saying it will be okay?
You are okay.
You feel lost and confused, but you can always remember:
Come home to your breath.
Feel how it flows in and out,
How the belly and chest move with each breath.
Connect to the flow of your breath
Then open afresh.
What is happening here?
What is happening now?
Also always remember:
You are loved.
You are safe.
You are a miracle.
You are beautiful.
You are unimaginably strong.
You are kind.
There is enough.
You are enough.
Let the sun’s warmth
Or a breeze on your cheek
Or the song of a bird
Be God’s tender touch. Let it be
The love in the universe for you and for all around you.
May you rest in that love.
You are a child of life.
You are worthy of all its splendour.
May your suffering serve to deepen that understanding.

May we have love for family and friends, for
Neighbours and even enemies, for
The ant and the beetle, for
The elephant and the whale, for
The gorilla and the black bear, for
This earth, our home.
Most of all, may we rest in love.
May we have love for ourselves
For that is the key to loving the others.

This earth is alive; all life is music.
I have listened to the cry for peace
Becoming resonant and strong.
My heart is open with joyous song

And love for all beings great and small.
But life is discordant, dark and cruel.
Without greed and fear, there’d be no joy.
I know this. Perhaps you know it too.

But We have betrayed life – embracing only
Greed and fear. I will cry: Stop!
I will weep… For our fellow animals. They too are alive. How we treat them!

No better than Inanimate parts in assembly lines
Where animals are disassembled
For grocery store checkout lines.
Alive, chicks are ground, hogs are boiled.
Lives spent as sows entrapped, cows In suction contraptions.
To feed the hungry? No!

To feed the overfed.
To fuel our greedy fire. Satiate our fear.
How have we come so low?
If you had to walk the careless isles
Of hens slammed into drawers too tight I think you could not eat those eggs.
If you had to slaughter the knowing pigs
So like us in their terrified screams…

If you could hear my scream, it’s like that.
Terror for these animals. Terror for our earth:
Hundreds of thousands of acres deforested.
Ocean floors raked lifeless with acres-wide nets.

We – indiscriminately – exterminate – life. Hate. Rape.
Child abuse. War. Toxic waste. Starving and sick children in the millions.
Why would we rip the earth open for yet more oil?

Is consumer spending valued over everything?
Efficiency valued over love of life?
Oh, how I weep for this life turned on its head!
I want to say, Dance with me – let’s make of life
A joyous song and love for beings great and small.

And perhaps I will, but I must also say,
Please
Address this greed and fear that condones
Torture of animals and destruction of our home.
For, this earth is alive and all life is precious.

We too are precious, but continuing this way,
We are at war. We are a cancer upon this earth.
Hear life’s cries: Be at peace.
Feel loved and love all. I weep, but

I must sing louder of life and love.

So like a bird,
No fear of falling,
Graceful wings
Ascending
And diving,
Breath unfailing
Inspires, expels.

As a bird one
With the air, as
A whale of its ocean
In currents
Roaring or
Gentle or still,
Knows its part,
So I rest
With this breath,
Feel the breeze
Open heart.
Leaves shake:
Be everything,
Be nothing.

Consider the unfathomable
Beyond what we see and know.
Consider the known universe
Beyond our sky river, our galaxy:
The expanses of dark, light, and
matter, Stars, moons, suns, planets, and comets.
Consider the Milky Way. Our sun,
Pluto, Mars, our Earth.
Earth’s atmosphere and
The debris orbiting it.
Clouds, oceans, continents,
Lakes, rivers, forests, plants, and animals.
The Canadian Shield beneath the soil.
Canyons, deserts, mountains.
Glaciers thousands of feet thick.
The Earth’s core – molten and hot.
The rotation of the earth on its axis and
Our illusion that the sun rises and sets.
Consider your own two feet
Held to the earth’s surface by gravity.
The horizon bows to the glowing morning
And you sparkle like a dust mote in the sun.

What sparked the universe when out of nothingness and darkness, somehow energy came to be? When I was painting a meditation: thoughts as flecks of colour on a dark background, I was struck by the idea... That it might have been a thought that sparked the universe. But whose thought? And a thought is not necessarily generative; nor is it often kind. Maybe it was an intention, then. An intention can be pure. Is generative. Just then, Gibran’s words came to me: “Life’s longing for itself” and that felt right – that a longing brought the universe into being. And is not a longing love? And whose longing? Whose love? I have felt be–longing: when the wind shakes the trees and the whisper resonates on my eardrum, I am part of the ceaseless flow of rising and falling that we perceive as birth and death when really it is this longing moving through us and through all and simply changing form as it goes.

It would seem then, that an earlier poem of mine, suggesting we are the benevolence in the void, was composed in a crisis of faith and the benevolence is, rather, just is.

Today, a grey muted winter’s day I feel old and sentimental and useless. But I go for a snowshoe anyway. Dried maple leaves rustle in the snowy wind. Their subtle orange reminds me to have faith – That spring will bring new life and colour, That love is, even in the darkest hours, That aspiration is in me, Even if it is only a seed longing for the sun. Who knows what truth is? Clinging to a belief is like clinging to winter. But if one listens. Really listens... Birds neither dread the winter nor long for its end. They don’t seek for truth or sing their version of it; They don’t need words like truth, trust, or aspiration; They just sing. They just fly. Chickadees flit from branch to branch and twitter. They do not suffer, as we do, the trappings of our minds. Yesterday, the sun filled early clouds with luminous gold. It was cold, cold, and the iced tips of the trees shone – Jewels in the sky till the sun warmed their branches. The earth in her rotation bowed down to the sun and Deep purple morning shadows shifted and warmed to grey. Snowflakes sparkled randomly in the air. Winter light made birch trees brilliant On a background of dark pines and sapphire sky. The sun rose today, too. I just can’t see it.

The surf booms
As great waters shape the shoreline —
Alternately caressing and battering curvaceous rocks.
As analogy for one’s life, I want to believe
They are benevolent great waters, but they are not.

The ocean is indifferent.
With time, even rock yields.
Life is neither malicious nor kind.
Perhaps it is so cold.
Hearing wave after wave,
I sense the vast and incomprehensible greatness.
Though, in loving presence,
Perhaps my compassion is the great compassion
And we are the benevolence in the void.

Go, where it is so quiet
The sounds of nature
And ringing in your ears
Are all you hear
And thoughts follow
Tumbling in your mind like acrobats
Projected on a screen
And you can know them
For the illusions they are.

Go, where there are no distractions
For your mind to pander after:
“Buy this – you need it”
“Play this – you’ll feel good”
“Drink this – numb the pain”
“You can’t have that – you don’t deserve it”
“Don’t do that – you’ll screw up”
“You won’t measure up – you’re not good enough,
Not pretty enough, smart enough, not funny, not cool…”

Go, where you can be still long enough
To stop believing the thoughts
And begin to listen to a new voice:
From deep within you and quiet,
But growing louder as you listen.
Grounded, compassionate, and wise,
It has always been there
To guide you, to love you,
To be your calm amidst the storm.

Go there often. Then,
You can be anywhere and
From your heart, you will speak and act
With kindness.
From your grounded place,
You will be calm for others in the storm.
You will hear the sounds of life around you
And feel life buzzing in your limbs and torso
And know harmony with all things.
Then, you truly are.

Snowshoe trail winds home.
Warm dogs weave through bare forest.
Above us, sapphire.
In the moment I
Recognize I carry a burden, I
Attend and know it is a heavy burden, I
Ask, why do I carry this?
Must I continue to carry this?
Can I lay it down on the ground?
And I Find that I can,
I Lay it down. It dissipates in
Snow and sky, in
A blond dog among grey trunks and then,
In the shadow of a
Scotch pine,
Lighter than imprints in the snow
Left by a white rabbit.

Cast in black, branches are
Dusted white and arched as
Cradle and shape for grey sky.

Snowflakes are hovering,
Light in the muffled air,
Merging soon with fields of white.

I see a gentle hand —
Grim yet benevolent,
Sculpting manifestations.

The hand that sculpted our
Beauty and grace, brilliant
By our sad and insistent malignance.