Inner Strength

"A quiet conscience makes one strong." ~ Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

A Poem of a Father by Mary Oliver

A Visitor

My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open

and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.

from Dream Work (1986). © Mary Oliver.

You are not a mistake

"You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself." ~ Geneen Roth, “Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything” 

Contemplation

Where I have looked for God:

1.      In the architecture of a flower.

2.      In the gauzy haze across a day of light rain.

3.      In the mystery of the stars.

4.      In the sacred quiet of the cemetery.

5.      In the irresistible seduction of the ocean.

6.      In the warmth of another’s touch.

7.      In the tears of those crushed by sorrow.

8.      In the pain of the sick.

9.      In the dejection of the lonely.

10. In the hurt of the shamed.

11.  In the panic of the fearful.

12.  In the gentleness of the humble.

13.  In the care of the generous.

14.  In the faces of children.

15.  In the eyes of the old.

© 2011 Timothy Moody

Imaginary Obstacles

"Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable.  Real ones aren't." - Barbara Sher, Author/Life Coach