one line ix

When it comes to conflagrations of the soul, I have little use for contemplative firefighting.

one line viii

Even her white blood cells were satyagrahi warriors.

one line vii

Relieve suffering at all times--and when possible, use words.

one line vi

To the degree you must question authority, question your own first.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I have to cook this food for the kids, give them a bath and put them in their beds.

It's a problem to have food?
To have a stove to cook it on?
To have kids?
To have a bathtub, running hot water, soap and towels?
To have beds for kids to sleep in?
To have the ability to cook and give baths?
Fatiguing blessings, maybe; problems, never.

one line v

When it comes to people, I would rather be beautifully beyond comparing than beautiful beyond compare.

Quiet Please

Thought process sounds mechanical and as suspect as processed cheese. Intellectual strength may be a matter of what we can comprehend, the number and complexity of concepts we can analyze and evaluate. It may also be a matter of what we can keep out, of how well we can create and sustain a quiet place for fundamental truths, discrete and discreet, to fall and be heard, appear and be seen.

Very Rough Lyric

Talk to me--
not to your abstractions
not to your principles
not to all the people you are trying
not to be like at this moment
not to everyone I represent
not to everyone you argue with in absentia continually

your face and my face only,
you and I
I to I.

one line iv

When you choose to take the high road, invite the others to come with you, for those who opposed you on the low road may pull out their mortars.

one line iii

realization is more than comprehension--it is making real, bringing into being....doing in the light of an enlightened thought

one line ii

Don't be in a hurry to slow down and you will, at least for a moment.

One Line i

In the absence of desire, it's nice to have a rational sense of duty to motivate right action.

One Way of Looking at Mothers Day

A holiday that celebrates what we wish we were or doubt we are can be a tricky time. Maybe we would do well to accept Mothers' Day (and ourselves as the objects of it) as we accept what children make in public or Sunday school--the ready made light verse/hand prints/faint random color marks/emerging visual artist or poet/sweet imperfect art presented with elation and brightness of hope. The dread pedestal of Mother of the Year is mockably out of reach if thought of, and not on most mother's minds, at all ("oh who would ever want to be queen"). But every mother can be the mom (don't you love the plainness of that title, and that it's palindrome holding in it an aspiration to be the same person forward and backward, when viewed from the public or private face?). And every mother can be the mom of the moment being with what she is, children or childless, children absent or present, in the moment and desiring, if not performing, to make herself fully present to the other, especially the others she calls her children.