Monday, March 31, 2008




Love Dogs

One night a man was crying,
Allah!  Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising, 
until a cynic said,
"So!  I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"

"Because I've never heard anything back."

"This longing you express 
is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

-Rumi

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?


Rumi's poetry is meant to open the heart.  Every line leads us ever deeper inito awareness of our own true nature.  
Here is a verse about living in relatedness to all creation.  Listen to it as addressed to you personally.  It is called:

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes 
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands.
if you want to be held.
Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.



There were two old men who dwelt together for many years and who never quarreled. Then one said to the other: "Let us pick a quarrel with each other like other men do. 

"I do not know how quarrels arise," answered his companion. 

So the other said to him: "Look, I will put a brick down here between us and I will say "This is mine." Then you can say "No it is not, it is mine." Then we will be able to have a quarrel." 

So they placed the brick between them and the first one said: "This is mine." 

His companion answered him: "This is not so, for it is mine." 

To this, the first one said: "If it is so and the brick is yours, then take it and go your way." 

And so they were not able to have a quarrel.

Saturday, March 29, 2008


St. Francis and the Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within of self-blessing;
as St. Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

--Galway Kinell

* * * * * * *
I never can read this poem without getting all choked up with tears.  Not because it makes me sad, but because it is so beautiful.  It radiates with truth, a truth that is hidden from our ordinary sight, but which is translucent to the inner eye of love.

Kinell must have had that contemplative eye to see so clearly into the "long, perfect loveliness of sow".  In other words, he saw a beast that is often thought of as ugly, or disgusting as God sees it:  perfectly lovely.  Or, as we read in Genesis, "God saw that it was good."  Aren't there parts of ourselves too that long for that touch of St. Francis on our brow?  We too need to remember just how beautiful we are.  Why?  Because God looks on us with Love, and when God looks on anything He confers on it His own beauty and goodness.  All things are like a mirror reflecting His image.  St. John of the Cross prays, "Look upon me O Lord, that having looked at me you may look at me again..."  

We can do for others what Francis did for the sow in this poem;  we can touch them with our love and respect, thus allowing them to see themselves as they really are:  lovely and lovable.

This is a poem that one can meditate on over and over, never exhausting the depth of its meaning.  It is so enduring because it speaks such a great truth.

Monday, March 24, 2008

How would you introduce Christ?

This is marvelous.  You'll want to jump up and start cheering at the end.  YES!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Got Dog?


And now for a little comic relief... and leave it to our furry friends to provide it.  I know with Laci, I just can't keep a smile off my face.  What a girl.  How about you?  Got Dog?

Friday, March 21, 2008


I love Jesus who told us
Heaven and earth shall pass away.
When heaven and earth pass away,
my word will remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Pardon? Charity?
All your words were
but one word:  Wake Up!

Make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I many not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Welcome to the 21st Century

This is a first entry to blog-land.
I want to learn how to do this so that I can find a way to spread abroad the Bliss of Being given to us by the Beloved.
My entries will be favorite stories and poems which express the exquisite Joy of Life.