Favorite Spiritual Poems

[Sky Dancer]

Song of the Builders


On a summer morning

I sat down

on a hillside

to think about God -



a worthy pastime.

Near me, I saw

a single cricket;

it was moving the grains of the hillside



this way and that way.

How great was its energy,

how humble its effort.

Let us hope





it will always be like this,

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.



from Why I Wake Early (2004)

 

[Sky Dancer]

CONVERSATION





God and I in space alone

and nobody else in view.

"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,

"the earth below and the sky o'er head

and the dead whom once I knew?"





"That was a dream," God smiled and said,

"A dream that seemed to be true.

There were no people, living or dead,

there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;

there was only Myself -- in you."



"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,

"meeting You here this way?

For I have sinned I know full well--

and is there heaven, and is there hell,

and is this the Judgment Day?"



"Nay, those were but dreams,"

the Great God said,

"Dreams that have ceased to be.

There are no such things as fear or sin;

there is no you -- you never have been--

there is nothing at all

but Me."





by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

[Sky Dancer]

All the Hemispheres





Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out



Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.



Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.



Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.



Change rooms in your mind for a day.



All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.



Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.



All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting



While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.





Hafiz from: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'

Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

 

[Sky Dancer]

Non-Duality



The bell tolls at four in the morning.

I stand by the window,

barefoot on the cool floor.

The garden is still dark.

I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes.



There is no light in the deepest hours of the night.

Yet, I know you are there

in the depth of the night,

the immeasurable world of the mind.

You, the known, have been there

ever since the knower has been.



The dawn will come soon,

and you will see

that you and the rosy horizon

are within my two eyes.

It is for me that the horizon is rosy

and the sky blue.



Looking at your image in the clear stream,

you answer the question by your very presence.

Life is humming the song of the non-dual marvel.

I suddenly find myself smiling

in the presence of this immaculate night.

I know because I am here that you are there,

and your being has returned to show itself

in the wonder of tonight's smile.



In the quiet stream,

I swim gently.

The murmur of the water lulls my heart.

A wave serves as a pillow

I look up and see

a white cloud against the blue sky,

the sound of Autumn leaves,

the fragrance of hay-

each one a sign of eternity.

A bright star helps me find my way back to myself.



I know because you are there that I am here.

The stretching arm of cognition

in a lightning flash,

joining together a million eons of distance,

joining together birth and death,

joining together the known and the knower.



In the depth of the night,

as in the immeasurable realm of consciousness,

the garden of life and I

remain each other's objects.

The flower of being is singing the song of emptiness.



The night is still immaculate,

but sounds and images from you

have returned and fill the pure night.

I feel their presence.

By the window, with my bare feet on the cool floor,

I know I am here

for you to be.





This poem is from "Call Me By My True Names" The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;



Where knowledge is free;



Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;



Where words come out from the depth of truth;



Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;



Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;



Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action--



Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.



-Gitanjali

 

[Sky Dancer]

The Grasp Of Your Hand



Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,

but to be fearless in facing them.



Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but

for the heart to conquer it.



Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,

but hope for the patience to win my freedom.



Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling

Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find

the grasp of Your hand in my failure.



- from the book, The Heart of God selected and edited by Herbert F. Vetter. Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Moving Water



When you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.



When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears. Don't let



others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope



of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness



people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.



The anger of police is willfulness. You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment. Now



see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you've



been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.



How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don't

insist on going where



you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your

living pieces will form



a harmony. There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear



water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.



Rumi, The Glance

Translated by Coleman Barks

 

[Sky Dancer]

Light Breeze



As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,

consider the body a robe



you wear. When you meet someone you love, do you kiss their clothes? Search out



who's inside. Union with God is sweeter than body comforts.

We have hands and feet



different from these. Sometimes in dream we see them.

That is not



illusion. It's seeing truly. You do have a spirit body;

don't dread leaving the



physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly

that he or she can live in



mountain solitude totally refreshed. The worried, heroic

doings of men and women seem weary



and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit.



From Soul of Rumi

by Coleman Barks

 

[Sky Dancer]

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

By Naomi Shihab Nye

 

[Sky Dancer]

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

 

[Sky Dancer]

What We Need Is Here


Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

 

[Sky Dancer]

The truly loving person breathes in the pain of the world and breathes out compassion.

Jack Kornfield

 

[Sky Dancer]

If you circumambulated every holy shrine in the world
ten times,
it would not get you to heaven
as quick
as controlling your
anger.

Kabir

 

[Sky Dancer]

Dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door every morning without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money or the keys to her doghouse never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance—Thoreau in his curtainless hut with a single plate, a single spoon?

Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world with nothing but her brown coat and her modest blue collar, following only her wet nose, the twin portals of her steady breathing, followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside every morning and eat all his food what a model of self-containment she would be,

what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears, so acrobatic in her welcomes, if only I were not her fallible god.

 

[Sky Dancer]

CRACKED OPEN


By now our hearts
have cracked open,
like so many holiday walnuts.

We can even try and scoop up
each of the shell remnants
and attempt to replace the covering,

yet we know this is futile.

As once opened, our hearts
continue to expand out from
our individual self into the

world at large. What began as
a place where the light rarely
peeked in, now has this streaming

light showering beams both ways,
into us and reflected out
to everyone we meet.

We revel in this being
cracked open, feeling
wave upon wave

of love pulsating through
each beat of newly
opened heart, ongoing…

Paul Goldman

 

[Sky Dancer]

Savior

Petulant priests, greedy
centurions, and one million
incensed gestures stand
between your love and me.

Your agape sacrifice
is reduced to colored glass,
vapid penance, and the
tedium of ritual.

Your footprints yet
mark the crest of
billowing seas but
your joy
fades upon the tablets
of ordained prophets.

Visit us again, Savior.
Your children, burdened with
disbelief, blinded by a patina
of wisdom,
carom down this vale of
fear. We cry for you
although we have lost
your name.


Maya Angelou

 

[Sky Dancer]

Bone



1.



Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone



2.



is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary



3.



yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn't see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it



4.



lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.



from Why I Wake Early (2004)

 

[Sky Dancer]

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?





Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.

It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.

The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.

The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.



But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white

feet of the trees

whose mouths open.

Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?

Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,

until at last, now, they shine

in your own yard?



Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.



When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking

outward, to the mountains so solidly there

in a white-capped ring, or was he looking



to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea

that was also there,

beautiful as a thumb

curved and touching the finger, tenderly,

little love-ring,



as he whirled,

oh jug of breath,

in the garden of dust?



Mary Oliver-from Why I Wake Early (2004)

 

[Sky Dancer]

I've discovered there are only two modes of the heart. We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender is a frightening word for some people, because it might be interpreted as passivity, or timidity. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, getting sick, dying, losing what is dear to us, what the Buddha taught as the first Noble Truth or life's unsatisfactoriness-- is beyond our control. I can either be frightened of life and mad at life-- or not. I can be disappointed and still not be mad. Stopping being and-- when I can,-- translates, for me as being compassionate-- to myself as well as to other people.

Sylvia Boorstein

Source: That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist

 

[Sky Dancer]

God's Jobs--An eight year old wrote this for his third-grade Sunday school teacher, who asked her students to explain God:

One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes these to put in the place of the ones who die so there will be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups, he just makes babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching them to walk and talk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and fathers. I think it works out pretty good.

God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, 'cause some people, like preachers and things, pray other times besides bedtimes, and Grandpa and Grandma pray every time they eat, except for snacks. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio and watch TV on account of this. 'Cause God hears everything, there must be a terrible lot of noise in his ears unless he has thought of a way to turn it down.

God sees and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting his time asking for things that aren't important, or go over parents' heads and ask for something they said you couldn't have. It doesn't work anyway.

(From A Third Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.