The Calling

Trials and blessings

You call me out
say — this will not do,
is not enough.
I’ll show you that
you still have stuff
to work through
and work on
- I’ll show you.

An invitation

A vast hall. 
High ceilings.
Oak floors.
Autumn sunlight
dreams through
stained glass.

From the clearing to the path

We met in caravans
each circle arriving
called together by common curiosity
to sit around the fire of our longings.

Nothing but the song

No one lives above sorrow, no.
To try is to try to fly six inches
above the ground and never touch it.
Oh no. You have to keep on letting go
and gravity will take you home.

Two songs

And now I know 
in these moments 
where I feel like I am 
rent apart by some 
out of control sea-storm
that leaves my body 
empty and aching 
that 
in these moments 
there are merely 
two songs being sung. 
The song of my body 
longs to let me know 
what I cannot see, 
longs for me to hear it 
and cries out…

Lionheart

Burn me down.
The clothes off my back.
The rhythm beyond
the counterattack.

Oh bless me,
oh be
my lionheart.

Patience builds a fire

I cover myself in a cloak.

Crouching down, head bowed,
my world becomes a cave.
I turn inside and light a fire
in the darkness -

Glad i skogen

I could long for no greater master 
Than the forest teacher 
Who with wind and silence says 
‘Be still’

No greater doctor than 
The forest healer who 
Holding life and death within her says 
‘You…

A turning point.

I am writing to you from the desert
Where I have wrung myself out
Like a damp flannel on an airless day.

There is nothing left here to offer.
No deep well of intuition. No gleeful spark.
The dusty casing discarded by an…

Be awakening

Wake up and be
A thousand-armed tree
Standing as the living spirit
Of awakening in this world

And keep the light
Of that fire
At your heart
That it might soften and grow
And acquire an intensity
That is…

This is the path of concentration

The path to concentration 
is beset on all sides
by the temptation
of distraction

The longing to be elsewhere
or everywhere or nowhere
robs here and now of
what it has…

FREE HARD CORE

Did I tell you already?

That I was driving along
a country road around
the corner from me and
I saw a sign that said

Ever better

It’s hard to say
When something stands
Just out of reach
Forever

A rich tree of goodness
Fertile fingers sink into the soil
A ribbon that wants to wind around
And bind two souls
A long sunset that sings…

Reminder for a Monday morning

Step down
into the river.
Step down.

I must remember
that I forget so easily.

And then I remember

There is a shred -
A shred of a sliver of something
That I recall in a thought
Of a smile that beams
Or the wryest grin with a twist
Or a face that is sunlit and loving
That I long for

Waving

I exist in the tension between two points

I tie together at the top
in a knot
at the point
where my idea of who I am
meets
a never-ending field
of potential inspiration.

Ending

why wait any longer?
why hold onto anything else

to be that one
that is able

to stay nowhere but here

who is above drama
who is beneath struggle

To be here

There is a place
I know
where I let go.

And there is nowhere
I know
that feels more like home.

Meeting

I reach out a thread to you,
tiptoe and stretched to a fingertip
as subtle inner constellations feel the strain,
slumbered inertia gives way to well-tuned strings
and I offer a connection, an open invitation,
to empty, energetic, unforgiving space and -
you might meet me here.

Vertigo

What is there to see?

The well is too deep.

When I turn the light
of my mind towards
the deepest feeling 
of a long drop falling
then I only see myself
and the surface tension
of my dark reflection.

Gratitude

The relief
of allowing
the truth
that I am not the one
making all of this happen
that I am and always have been
part of a web
of friends and neighbours and strangers
that I do not have to know
everything
that I can say ‘I do not know’
that all the harshness
and the struggle
and the pain
was hung on a lie
that…

The independence of the heart

Being loving brings happiness.
Being unloving brings nothing.

Staying true is hard. For everyone.

Bring water to the thirsty.
Bring love to the unloving.

Being loving always helps

If you want to be happy,
being loving always helps.

If you can’t be loving,
then it helps to remember that
being loving always helps.

Burn the house down

Burn the house down
leave nothing to chance

Take everything outside
and set it on fire

Pour salt on the ashes
and cover them in diesel
then burn them again