Recently Mary Oliver’s poem, “In the Storm,” landed in my inbox. In the poem, Oliver took a remarkable scene from nature — acts of kindness between birds in a storm — and used her keen observational powers and poetic magic...
On this #Mindfulness Monday, we focus on the beauty in the ordinary. Though ordinary things and actions are often overlooked or discounted, they often form the foundation for everything that follows. In Pat Schneider’s “The Patience of Ordinary Things” in...
Like a ball kicked high into the sky, this story and poem lifted my spirits today. While I’ve read Rilke’s poem, “All will come again into its strength” many times before -this the first time I fully grasped what a...
Capulet: But, soft! What day is this? Paris: Monday, my lord.* *Yes, taken out of context… but hard to resist. I hope you’ll forgive me. Today is Shakespeare’s birthday. Or at least it’s celebrated as such. So for the last hours...
#MindfulnessMondays: Today’s poem, “Don’t Listen to Them,” comes from Talib, one of the poets in “The Untold Story of the Real Me: Young Voices from Prison.” I was particularly taken by the following lines: “They say a positive mind is...
Whether it’s making it through this long winter, the political climate, or just the ebbs and flows of the year, we all could use extra resilience, grit and determination. In her reflection in Teaching with Heart on Calvin Coolidge’s “Persistence,” April...
I have to admit that sometimes when I realize it’s time (or past time) to create the week’s #Mindfulness Mondays post, I wonder, what have I’ve gotten myself into? Do I really have the time or energy to post one of...
Last week, Helen Mirren read an excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It is a masterful reading of a powerful and poignant poem. Well worth listening and watching. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJb_zJbJ7FI “Ulysses”...
This morning I was running late and so was rushing to get a poem posted for #Mindfulness Mondays. (And yes, I do see the irony in that.) I opened my copy of Poetry of Presence and turned to this week’s...
Sometimes it can be difficult to know how to find the space – in our day, in our mind, in our heart – to be quiet, to be mindful. Last week’s #Mindfulness Mondays poem by Rumi suggested that we join...