Grace
gives me a day
too beautiful
I had thought
to stay indoors
& yet
washing my dishes
straightening
my shelves
finally
throwing out
the wilted
onions
shrunken garlic
cloves
I discover
I am happy
to be inside
looking out.
This, I think,
is wealth.
Just this choosing
of how
a beautiful day
is spent.
by Alice Walker
Are you in your Body?
Sincerely explore for yourself, are you here or not? Are you in your body or oblivious, or only aware of parts of it? When I say, ‘Are you in your body?’ I mean ‘Are you completely filling your body?’ I want to know whether you are in your feet, or just have feet. Do you live in them, or are they just some thing you use when you walk? Are you in your belly, or do you just know vaguely that you have a belly? Or is it just for food?
Are you really in your hands, or do you move them from a distance? Are you present in your cells, inhabiting and filling your body? If you aren’t in your body, what significance is there in your experience of this moment? Are you preparing, so that you can be here in the future? Are you setting up conditions by saying to yourself, ‘When such and such happens I’ll have time, I’ll be here.’ If you are not here, what you are saving yourself for?
Hameed Ali
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for 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 landscapes,
over the prairies 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.