Hello loves,
My name is Meg McCracken.
Welcome to simple words for stressful times,
An embodied poetry and meditation experience.
Take a moment to find a seat that's comfortable for you,
Easy for you,
And allow yourself to nestle in.
Allow your eyes to close or simply soften your gaze down your cheeks.
Relax your jaw completely so that you can feel your inner ear soften and widen for deep receptive listening.
Put one hand over your heart and the other hand over that and receive a breath.
Simply allowing yourself to experience your breath in your chest,
In your heart space.
Making space for this experience,
Making space for these words to land in your heart.
This is a poem for the sons and daughters of Ukraine.
Don't abandon the way it makes you feel,
The way it breaks your heart to know that though the stars are out tonight,
Missiles also dot the sky.
Bombs rain down and punch the earth,
Exploding lives,
Killing innocents,
Fracturing faith.
Receive a breath here in your heart.
All for land that can't be owned,
For debts that can't be paid,
For pain that won't be named for power that will never be enough to satiate the fallow sense of emptiness inside.
Stay very close to this kind of pain.
It's supposed to be unbearable,
Overwhelming,
Horrifying.
It's supposed to stop you in your tracks.
It's supposed to make you feel sick to your soul.
To give in to this kind of rupture is to finally give yourself honestly over to how we are lost,
Estranged from the earth,
Orphaned from ourselves and hostile towards the way that we belong to each other.
Receive a breath into your heart space,
Soften your jaw and allow your inner ears to widen and soften.
Tonight give up your want for all of the comfortable,
Familiar things.
Put down your tea,
Cork the wine,
Turn off the movies,
Put away the games,
Don't even try to move or to meditate it away.
Instead scream and cry and shake your fists in the air.
Let your heart fracture as a baby is born in a bomb shelter rocketed by the sounds of overgrown hate battering the landscape outside and her mother's voice singing,
Hoping that there is still something to hope for.
Receive a breath in your heart.
Envision each one who is existing beneath the fire strewn sky,
Each one who is fighting,
Fleeing or falling down dead.
Put their pictures up on your kitchen wall and place them into your heart when you take down a cup,
When you turn on the faucet,
When you feed your family,
When you talk to your friend on the phone while your hands wash the dirty dishes.
Take in their interrupted lives,
Their disorientation,
Their bloodied looks of betrayal,
The weight of what it is they are being asked to do.
Feel the fear,
The disgust and despair,
Feel the fabric of humanity rip.
Let it bring you to your knees and to the fullness of your senses,
Even to the dark impulse that wants to separate you from the wellspring of your love.
Then lay your head down in the soft of your pillow.
Give thanks for that simple soft pillow and hand all of it over to your dream keeper.
Pray for her to take it in,
To make it whole,
To spin every last fiber into a thread of wisdom that will wake you up in the morning,
That will greet your reflection in the mirror with love,
That will make your tea and pet the dog,
That will bring you to your meditation cushion where you can invite the devastated into your heart.
The Ukrainians,
The Russians and all of the others,
The children,
The mothers,
The fathers,
The brothers,
The oppressors and the oppressed,
Here to the fullness of your breast,
May they feel the touch of your simple kindness in the midst of this mess.
One stitch at a time,
We will mend the fabric.
One gesture of gentleness when your child rebels.
One moment of listening when you don't agree.
One look of welcoming to the man on the corner as you offer a little something so that he may eat today and remember how he too is a treasure of life.
One word of easy praise to the barista.
One softening when the tensions of ideas pull tight.
One breath of patience that can become a moment of prayer when you are running late and the traffic stands still.
Hands on your heart,
Receive a breath in your chest.
Relax your jaw,
Soften and widen your inner ear.
Listen,
Each and every one of us and all of us together,
Holding the complexities of truth,
The courage of our hearts,
The threads of our wisdom and each moment we are given,
We sew,
We stitch,
We weave,
We patch,
We darn,
We mend,
We pray,
We love and we live the fabric of humanity into the great tapestry of life itself.
With your simple thread of life,
What kind of world will you be weaving today?
This Is.
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