Do You Hear the Music? – Kirtana
Your Beloved calls you here today
To ask you for this dance; what will you say?
Are you going to throw the chance away?
And do you hear the music?
I know you’ve got a lot of things to do,
But I think the world could turn a time or two
Without all your precious plans
And you could stop to hear the music
In your heart, in your heart
Maybe you should give your mind a rest
And put its main assumption to the test;
Just let go and see who leads the best,
Surrender to the music
Maybe you don’t need to understand
Maybe these are steps that can’t be planned
Funny how your feet know where to land
When you listen to the music
In your heart, in your heart
Your Beloved calls you here today
To ask you for this dance; what will you say?
Are you going to throw the chance away? —
Or listen to the music, listen to the music
In your heart…
David Whyte
“Everything Is Waiting for You”
After Derek Mahon Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surly, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out of your solo voice. You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you courage. Alertness is the hidden disipline of familiarity. The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
“Lockdown” – A Poem on Covid-19 by Br Richard Hendrick ofm
“Lockdown”
Brother Richard Hendrick ofm
Yes there is fear. Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound. Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now. Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing
Sometimes by David Whyte
PSG @ Edmund Rice 