The Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
unnamed
by Rupi Kaur,
from Home Body
You are not alone.
Alone would be
if your heart no longer beat
and your lungs no longer pulled
and your breath no longer pushed.
How are you alone
if an entire community lives in you?
You have all of you on your side.
unnamed
by Jeff Foster,
from
You Were Never Broken
Wanting to live,
and wanting to die.
Wanting to break into newness,
and wanting to hide.
Wanting to connect,
and wanting to be alone.
Wanting to want,
and wanting to be free from want.
unnamed
by Jeff Foster,
from
You Were Never Broken
Child, you hold all of this sacredness
in your vast and beautiful heart.
Never turn away from any part, my love.
Yet never let any part be your master.
Live right in the middle.
Be free and wild in the middle
like the trees in the forest:
Reach out for the light, yes,
but love your shadows too.
unnamed
by Pesha Joyce Gertler
Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.
unnamed
by Rumi,
The cure for the pain
is in the pain.
Love Sorrow
by Mary Oliver
Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing the street. For, think,
what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forhead that she feel herself not so
utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment
by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,
as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.
I Celebrate You
by Laura Patryas
I celebrate you.
You are allowed to be here.
You are welcome...
To say yes. To say no.
To feel everything—joy, anger, sorrow, peace.
To rest. To rise. To leave. To stay.
You are allowed to follow your heart,
even as it dissolves the boundaries
between what you thought you were
and the vastness of what you are.
Who you are begins in the unseen,
in the radiant void of potentiality.
Your growth, your becoming, rises
from the depths of the unconscious.
You don’t need a reason to be.
Life does not wait for permission
—it is already living itself through you.
I celebrate you.
How To
Hold Regret Tenderly
by Syanna Wand
I wish I would have done that differently,
and,
at the time,
I couldn't.
unnamed
by Ray Castellino
The only time
we can feel safe
is right now.
Wild Things
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscape,
over the praries and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
Over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
​
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Out Beyond Ideas
by Rumi
from The Essential Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn’t make any sense.
unnamed
by Rumi
Come, come, fellow traveler.
Wanderer, worshiper, itinerant:
it makes no difference.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken
ten thousand vows.
Come yet again,
come, come.
The Most Important Thing
by Julia Fehrenbacher
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
​
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
​
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
​
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
​
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
​
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.
You Belong
by Kara Stella
I see you.
You are not alone.
You belong.
You matter.
You make sense.
I am here.