Poetry
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Following your inner compass: “The Journey”
“And there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.” — Mary Oliver The greatest gift of maturing is finding your own power and discovering who you are meant to be — not what others think you should be or want you to be. But the road to authenticity isn’t without obstacles. Mary Oliver’s “The Journey” gives us a new map. It’s one of my all-time favorite poems and has become a personal anthem. A great poem reminds us that the personal is universal, and this one brings shivers of recognition each time I read it aloud in my writing workshops. –CL THE JOURNEYBy Mary Oliver One…
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Unexpected joy
“Joy is not made to be a crumb.” ~Mary Oliver Suddenly, everyone’s talking about “joy” — a word that’s typically reserved for holiday greeting cards. When was the last time you felt joy? Joy is unbridled optimism and unabashed positivity, which can be hard to feel if you’re mired in the habit of negative thinking. Dark energy, after all, is both pervasive and contagious. So, who doesn’t want to experience joy for a change? Mary Oliver’s poetry always resonates. And when a dear friend shared “Don’t Hesitate” in an email last week, the word “joy” jumped off the screen and lifted me from the funk I was in. It was…
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Finding our way back home
“This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come.” ~David Whyte “Home” is a small but expansive word. What does it really mean to make a home, to feel at home, or to be at home with oneself? At the same time, the buildings we call home reflect who we are, which is why inviting people inside our homes is an intimate gesture that extends beyond basic hospitality. My mother had a gift for creating beautiful homes, and I inherited her appreciation of the domestic arts. In a nursing facility near the end of her life, she was confined to a wheelchair and talked constantly…
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Nature’s magic show
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” ~Mary Oliver I rarely carry or use my cell phone when I’m walking a nature trail. So I’m continually baffled by all the people I see (and hear) who are focused on their phones instead of the beauty all around them. Some are gabbing so loudly that their voices drown out the music of the birds. American poet Mary Oliver is known for her sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. Her reflective poems illuminate the everyday miracles we might overlook when we’re jogging through the woods or our suburban neighborhoods. As Oliver reminds us, there’s magic in nature…
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“Make music of what you can”
I always knew I wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I perched in the gnarly apple tree in my backyard and scribbled stories in a notebook with lined pages. In college I majored in English and journalism, but it took a few more years to find the courage (and the income) I needed to begin a real writing career. The zig-zag path that led me here was marked with detours and littered with excuses. After graduation, I worked at other jobs where I learned some valuable lessons — including what I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life. The poem below is…
