Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
​so He also loves the bow that is stable.

    - Kahlil Gibran

And we know, when Moses was told
    in the way he was told,
"Take off your shoes", he grew pale from that simple

reminder of fire in the dusty earth.
    He never recovered
his complicated way of loving again

and was free to love in the same way
    the fire licking at his heels loved him.
As if the lion earth could roar

and take him in one movement.
    Every step he took
from there was carefully placed.

Everything he said mattered as if he knew
    the constant witness of the ground
and remembered his own face in the dust

the moment before revelation.
    Since then thousands have felt
the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak.

Like the moment you too saw, for the first time,
    your own house turned to ashes.
Everything consumed so the road could open again.

Your entire presence in your eyes
    and the world turning slowly
into a single branch of flame.

    - David Whyte

Now is the time to know
that all you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
a lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
that all your ideas of right and wrong
were just a child's training wheels
to be laid aside
when you finally live
with veracity
and love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
whom the Beloved
has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
why do you still
throw sticks at your heart
and God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
that incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
that every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
that there is anything
but Grace.

Now is the season to know
that everything you do
is sacred.

    -Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by.  Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague.  "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up.  Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it.  To smile
at them and for them to smile back.  For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now.  So far
from tribe and fire.  Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here,
have my seat,"  "Go ahead--you first,"  "I like your hat."

​    - Danusha Lameris

​We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

WE HAVE COME

    - Jewel Mathieson

Fortunate is the hour
when you stumbled and fell down into this.

Never stand again.
On your knees remain
where the earth is,

where the fire is ever-ready
and the air ever-clear,
water, and the stones of God.

For the Woods of Error are
the words of the real,
chosen for us as

the color of your soul.
Lie where forgiveness lies,
make love to that.

For there is nothing else
but gratitude, which is what
all your longing was for.

​    -Bruce Moody

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like somebody suddenly born
​into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side.  Die,
and be quiet.  Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

    - Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Even if I don't see it again--nor ever feel it
I know it is--and that if once it hailed me
it ever does--
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn't--I was blinded like that--and swam 
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I'd die
from being loved like that.

    - Marie Howe

Make love
with the Earth.

Let her
have her way
with you.

Let her caress
your naked feet,
crawl up into your clothes.

Better yet,
slip them off
and let them fall
like leaves
to the ground,

so she can behold
your soft, animal skin,
your naked glory.

Let yourself be undone.

Lie with your belly
on her belly.

Inhale her heady aroma.
Give yourself to her.

Let her mark you
with her rich, fertile scent,
the scent of life itself.

Let her whisper
dark, moist secrets
to you,

awakening
the beautiful
wild animal
slumbering
deep inside you.

Let her
remind you
who
you really are.

- Kai Siedenburg