For Earth Day, 22 April

“The trees breathe for you, the bees buzz for you, the mycelium burrows deep into the soil for you. Our ancestors knew how to live in accordance with the truth of our interdependence and we must learn how to do the same. We must sink down into the structures of our cells to find what was embedded by generations of those who stood in the dignity of their rightful place as stewards of the earth. When the hush of a woodland’s silence raises the hairs on our necks, or we feel an expansiveness arise in our heart-space when standing on the precipice of a cliff or canyon or mountainside and breathe deep, we can touch that remembering. The salt that gathers on our skin, the tears we shed, the breath that flows across our lips are all manifestations of how profoundly we are connected. The earth dwells in the water that steadies our cells and in the marrow that runs through our bones. Our interconnection was known to our ancestors, and it is our duty to remember this now. We must seek to become intimate with what is indiscrete and divine, for the sake of this planet, our only home.”

From Unearthed: On Race and Roots, and How the Soil Taught Me I Belong by Claire Ratinon

“Splendors of the spring world,
uplift me.
Peonies, you slow-motion fireworks,
beguile me.
Sunday sky, the color of a newborn’s eyes,
regard me.
Starry night, the color of opals strewn across rain-soaked earth,
enchant me.
Fields of spring, sweetening the air,
calm me.
Glory of iris, pulsing in my pupil like the warm blood in my wrist,
astound me.
All you realities of the spring world,
call to me.
Man on the street corner talking to himself,
beguile me no less than peonies.
Woman recovering slowly from deep hurt,
move me no less than the expanse of the sky.
Child without either shoes or good guidance,
teach me.
All you parts of nature, human and floral, elemental and mysterious,
silence me.”

Spring Benedicite by Mark Belletini

For Easter

“Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us
how a stone has been rolled
from the mind, and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.
There are travellers upon the road
who have heard music blown
from a bare bough, and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack
of petrol, is crowned with flowers.”

Resurrection by R. S. Thomas (1913 – 2000)

For Holy Week

“The standard of Love is a high one.
We all rebel, and some are clueless.
They are not just or generous or truthful
They spend their time plotting to get ahead;
they plunder the world and do not share.
I hate this—but I am not innocent. Though I try to share,
to be just and frugal,
most of the world points its finger at me.

Your love encompasses us all—strong
like the mountains, deep like the sea
You give the priceless gift of life.
We take refuge in the shadow of your wings
We feast on the good things of the spirit
And see our aching world through your soft light.

Help us to find this happy place
to be true of heart and not so proud
Help us to live well and fairly
unseduced by the wickedness around us.”

Psalm 36 Love and the World by Christine Robinson

For Lady Day, 25 March

“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.”

Annunciation by Marie Howe

For the Vernal Equinox

“O Sacred Balance, poised at true,
in this season when night and day are equal,
by moonlight and sunlight,
come with your holy searchlight
as I survey the different calls on my life.
Be in my discernment of time as I go between world and home today.
Help me to discover my need
for busyness and rest,
for solitude and togetherness,
for self and other.
Be the deep well within me
fluidly moving between discipline and mercy,
that I might live in the ebb and flow of your rhythms
knowing that there is a time for all things.
Make me steady in my day as I set forth this morning.”

From The Celtic Wheel of the Year: Celtic and Christian Seasonal Prayers by Tess Ward

“I’ve found something so rare,
So miraculous,
No-one can assess
How much it is worth.

It is colourless and One;
It is eternal and indivisible;
The waves of change never break over it;
It fills every vessel.

It has no weight; it has no price;
No-one can ever measure it;
No-one can count it;
It cannot be known
Through talk or erudition.
It isn’t heavy and it isn’t light.
There isn’t a touchstone in any world
That can reveal its worth.

I live in it; it lives in me
And we are one, like water
Mingled with water.
The one who knows it
Can never die –
The one who doesn’t know it
Dies again and again.”

Kabir, 15th century India

Image: Am I a Drop or the Ocean? by Kamran Khavarani

For International Women’s Day

“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!”

Now I Become Myself by May Sarton (1912 – 1995)

For Lent

“To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you

to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.”

Rend Your Heart by Jan Richardson

Ramadan begins

“The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
“You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love,
the resurrection-place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?”

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don’t try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love’s secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
“Here I am!””

Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273)