These Four Walls (Shawn Colvin)

Thanks so much to Melanie for passing on this video - how perfectly-timed for Thanksgiving!

My postings will be sporadic over the next five days - my son Eric came home from college tonight (instead of tomorrow when I expected him!)... tomorrow will be housecleaning/prep day, Thursday is obvious (we'll have 8 here for dinner)... and there are plans for Friday and Saturday as well. Lots of family, food and festivity - bring it on... :-)

P.S. SMM...

SONG: These Four Walls by Shawn Colvin

BOOK: Wisdom: 50 Unique and Original Portraits by Andrew Zuckerman

POEM: What's In The Temple? by Tom Barrett

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to

spring.

It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.

The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.

The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for

us to follow.

The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.

The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.

If she stands still it will catch up with her.

Pause with us here a while.

Put your ear to the wall of your heart.

Listen for the whisper of knowing there.

Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.

They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."

Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.

They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be

found,

But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,

And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.

So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.

Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm

fur,

And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.

You see there the consequences of carelessness,

And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.

The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don't build many temples anymore.

Maybe we learned that the sacred can't be contained.

Or maybe it can't be sustained inside a building.

Buildings crumble.

It's the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,

What would you worship there?

What would you bring to sacrifice?

What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

QUOTE: "As we practice forgiveness we discover more and more that forgiveness and healing are one." ~ Agnes Sanford

Holy Now (Peter Mayer)

SONG: Holy Now by Peter Mayer

BOOK: Holy Personal: Looking for Small Private Places of Worship by Laura Chester (Author), Donna De Mari (Photographer)

POEM: Everything is Waiting for You by David White

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

QUOTE: "The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself." ~ Anais Nin

Holy As the Day is Spent (Carrie Newcomer)

SONG: Holy As the Day is Spent by Carrie Newcomer

BOOK: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) by Neale Donald Walsch

POEM: by Deborah Cummins ~ Just One God

And so many of us.
How can we expect Him
to keep track of which voice
goes with what request.
Words work their way skyward.
Oh Lord, followed by petition —
for a cure, the safe landing.
For what is lost, missing —
a spouse, a job, the final game.
Complaint cloaked as need —
the faster car, porcelain teeth.
That so many entreaties
go unanswered
may say less about our lamentable
inability to be heard
than our inherent flawed condition.

Why else, at birth, the first sound
we make, that full-throttled cry?
Of want, want, want.
Of never enough. Desire
as embedded in us as the ancestral tug
in my unconscienced dog who takes
to the woods, nose to the ground, pulled far
from domesticated hearth, bowl of kibble.
Left behind, I go about my superior business,
my daily ritual I could call prayer.

But look, this morning, in my kitchen,
I'm not asking for more of anything.
My husband slices bread,
hums a tune from our past.
Eggs spatter in a skillet.
Wands of lilac I stuck in a glass
by the open window wobble
in a radiant and — dare I say it? —
merciful light.

QUOTE: "The real work of this life is to allow ourselves to be who we already are, and to have what we already have. The real work is to be passionate, to be holy, be wild, be irreverent, to laugh and cry until you awaken the sleeping spirits, until the ground of your being cleaves and the universe comes flooding in." ~ Geneen Roth, Appetites