....let go

“Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It's like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That's a triumph.”
 Farewell Summer

More Poems - 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.”
― Mary Oliver

You are my Lord ~

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). Such is the “exile of hope” we suffer in this world... Torah begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was “tohu va’vohu v'choshekh” (תהוּ וָבהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ) - confusion and emptiness and darkness - which the sages interpret to mean that when we understand that God created the heavens and the earth, we will realize our earthy desires to b...e barren, empty and unreal. In their despair, Plato and the early Greek philosophers sought “timeless universals” which they believed disclosed the reality of an “upper world,” a heavenly realm of unchanging goodness, beauty, and truth. The world we experience with our senses is a shadowy place of change and decay; but the real world, discerned by clear thinking, is a place of permanence, goodness and illumination. Likewise the righteous soul trusts that despite this fleeting world that turns to dust, there is an eternal realm, a place of abiding love, and a heavenly home. The land of promise is a “foreign land” to this world, but the heart of faith beholds “the city that has foundations, whose Designer and Builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). Therefore “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient (πρόσκαιρος), but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 4:18-5:1). In this world we suffer exile, groaning to be with our Savior, the Source of all blessing, as is written in our Scriptures: “I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you" (Psalm 16:2).

Wings ~

“The wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping.”

A Day With Grandma ~

My Sweet Aliyah ~

Let Go ~

Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That's who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn't believe it. - C. Assaad