When Someone Deeply Listens

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you’ve had since childhood

and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you

the room where you stay

starts a new life

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind’s eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you

your barefeet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now at home within you.

- John Fox -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Want the Change

Want the change.  Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.  And Daphne, becoming
       a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

- Rainer Maria Rilke -

Sit and Be Still

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

- Wendell Berry -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

With Passion

With

passion pray. With

passion work. With passion make love.

With passion eat and drink and dance and play.

Why look like a dead fish

in this ocean of God?

- Rumi - 

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Exquisite Freedom

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

- Maya Angelou -

    Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

The Silk Worm

I stood before a silk worm one day.

And that night my heart said to me,

"I can do things like that, I can spin skies,

I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people;

I can be soft against a crying face,

I can be wings that lift, and I can travel on my thousand feet

throughout the earth,

my sacks filled

with the

sacred."

And I replied to my heart,

"Dear, can you really do all those things?"

And it just nodded "Yes"

in silence.

So we began and will never

cease.

- Rumi -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com

Jealous of a Pond

When God said, "My hands are yours," I saw that I could heal any

creature in this world;

I saw that the divine beauty in each heart

is the root of all time

and space.

I was once a sleeping ocean

and in a dream became

jealous of a

pond.

A penny can be eyed in the street

and a war can break out

over it amongst

the poor.

Until we know that God lives in us

and we can see Him 

there,

a great poverty

we suffer.

- Rabia -

Artist: Maureen L White, www.urbanpasturesart.com