Calm hearts

“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”

                     Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

 

Do you count your heartbeats

hoping for a million more?

Or number your breathes, sharp and quick?

Or the steps you take across

this glorious earth?

 

Until one morning you see how time

is fleeting but also impossibly slow?

That time is best counted in moments:

sips of wine spreading gladness

through your limbs, blush

of breathless conversation

while embers glow, waiting

to be stoke and set aflame

                     Christine Valters Paintner, The Wisdom of Wild Grace,  p.99

______________________________________________

 

It is painfully slow

the sun as it creeps its way into the frigid sky

 

there are things to do

places to go

 

I am not impressed

with how dawn lingers

 

but

 

perhaps the problem is not with

the sun

and its slow rise

 

nor with the mountain that sits

stolidly and patiently

 

but with my tumultuous soul

which allows the chaos without to become

chaos within

 

I think, at times,

I suffer from a spiritual dysfunction

where I allow what I notice “out there”, in the world

to shape my soul,

rather than allowing my soul, what is inside,

to shape how I see the world

 

I see the outrage in the world

and I swallow it whole

digesting it and making it part of me

 

and soon I am outrage

 

ah for the wisdom

to stop, breathe, and notice

 

to connect with the peace

that is planted within

 

and allow that inner peace

to slow me down

and give me eyes

 

to savor each moment

to live each moment

 

to see the snow on the trees

the pink morning sky

the gamboling cat, playing in the snow

 

to feel the beat of my heart

and notice my breath coming in, going out

and to keep my mind

stayed on Love