I give you the letter
I never sent
that begins with
how precious you are
and ends with
love always and forever

I give you star dipped kisses
to wear in your hair

I give you a small yet competent compass
to hold in your pocket

I give you true North as your guide

I give you back your last two birthdays

I give you the card that reads:
now, you may begin anew

I give myself one, too.

©heartsdeesire

like the one about the man who
walked down the street
& turned into
a drugstore.

There was some secret in the moment
of that turning—when he has one thing,
became another—
that I return to again & again.

The day she stopped being
grandma and turned into
that madwoman.

The day my sister stopped being
& never came back. Perhaps there
was an instant between her secret sleep

& the moment the fever struck,
from which she could have been plucked.

Do not make that turn, I want to say to the man
who becomes the drugstore; to the woman
who dies insane; to my sister;

to the boy who became an adult
the moment the cell door slammed shut.
I want to freeze-frame each instant of turning,

unfold in slow motion the moment of callous
change. Perhaps the secret’s in the man’s
intention; in the list in his pocket of mundane
nostrums he was sent to fetch home.

Or perhaps I’ve got it wrong,
perhaps there’s a soda fountain where they all sit—
the man, my grandmother, my sister, the boy—

& drink nickel root beer floats, look back
on that fateful turn, & laugh among themselves
at the rest of us, who took it all so seriously.

~Richard Beban~
what have you lost?
Poems Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

“We are what is missing from the world”
~Fernando Pessoa

Some questions have no answer.
Raised, they hang there in the mind
Like open mouths, full of something missing.
The great Portuguese poet, Pessoa,
Said that the idea of happiness
Is what makes men permanently sad.
The body, imagining the soul,
Looks ugly to itself.
A man hears a word, and the world
Becomes a place that he misunderstands.
So he climbs high into his life,
Ashamed of all he doesn’t know,
And refuses to come down.

If you could coax him out again,
You could tell him, say,
That anything can be explained.
The shape of apples, for example,
By their love of travel.
Or that the sky is blue because
It’s an easy color on the eyes.

Even the dog, chasing its tail,
Has temporarily, a center.
Even the bird, disappearing into his hole
Knows that the world goes on without it.
And Pessoa, that eminently healthy man,
That artist, wore a blue wool hat
Even on the hottest summer days.
Simply to toss at strangers in the street.
He liked to see them catch it,
And grow immediately less strange.

~Tony Hoagland~
what have you lost?
Poems Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Bet you can’t watch it without at least one little happy tear coming to your eyes!

Told ya!  There is another video at youtube depicting more images of their life with Christian.  And this month they have published a book: Christian the Lion by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall.

it’s nice to know
that when I’m feeling low
I can come visit my own blog
and laugh and cry and be soothed
find hope and remember

it’s nice to know
I’ve left a well marked trail
it’s lighted, too
and filled with my favorite things

it’s nice to know
others have come here and
felt better for it
they’ve also laughed and cried
found hope and remembered

and now I remember, too
I am not alone
not now, not ever.

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.  The labyrinth is thoroughly known.  We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god…Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.  And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”
~Joseph Campbell~

I am reading Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser.  The above Joseph Campbell quote is excerpted from this book.  I haven’t gotten very far in the book so I can’t really make a recommendation one way or the other but if you have gone through a recent particularly difficult time, it might be the book for you.

I call these particularly difficult times the “pinch me” times.  There are two types of pinch me’s.  Pinch me, I must be dreaming, this is too good to be true and then the other kind: pinch me, I want to wake up from this nightmare.  But the nightmare is real and the waking up that follows is vastly different than waking up from a nightmare with a grateful sigh of relief that it really didn’t happen.  Thankfully most of us can count on one hand how many of the latter we have experienced.  It might be a divorce, a major move, a job loss, it might be the loss of a loved one that thrusts us abruptly into a territory we weren’t quite prepared to enter.  Suddenly we are left caught off guard, vulnerable, raw and unready to face this new challenge.

Many have moved through such times before us and paved a path, they leave bread crumbs of hope along the way.  They carve out handholds to grasp for support. They are the heroes that have taken this path before us and chosen to lend a hand to others along the way.

The Obama administration speaks of service, of cultivating an attitude of ‘we can do it’.   The heroes that I speak of, are in service too, every bit a part of the we can do it.  To all of you heroes, I say thank you.

Love, Bethie

I sat in a coffee shop the other day and heard this song play
overhead.  Instantly it took me back to the day I first heard
it.  It was at a celebration of a friend’s life.  It still gives me
goosebumps to hear it today.  It is absolutely one of the
most inspiring songs I’ve ever heard – so filled with hope, faith,
trust and encouragement to just go for it.   As Rilke once
wrote: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your
longing.  Embody me.  Flare up like flame and make big shadows
I can move in.  Love, Bethie