Don’t ask what love can make, or can do.
Look at the colors of the world!
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty, and scared.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument and start to play.
Let the beauty you love be what you do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Be patient.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit
The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt
is the patience it contains.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull
of what you really love
When you do things from your soul, a river moves though you,
Freshness and a deep joy are the signs…
Be concentrated, and leonine
in the hunt for what is your true nourishment
Let body needs dwindle and
soul decisions increase
Diminish what you give your physical self.
Your spiritual eye will begin to open.
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment
comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter after more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, “The world is vast and intricate.
There are wheat fields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer:
“There is no ‘other world’.
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.”
The soul at dawn is like darkened water
that slowly begins to say Thank you, thank you.
When you feel gloomed over,
it’s your failure to praise. Irreverence
and no discipline rob your soul of light.
Awe is the salve
that will heal our eyes.
Don’t ever feel sorry for someone
who wants to be the sun, that other sun,
the one that makes rotten things fresh.
Make your loving clearer and clearer
No wantings, no anger. In that purity
you can receive and reflect the images of every moment,
from here, from the stars…
There is one righteousness:
Water the fruit trees,
and don’t water the thorns. Be generous
to what nurtures the spirit and God’s luminous
reason-light.
