When talking about what to share this month, Melissa and I decided on our favorite poem. I was relieved to have an easier prompt since our post was due in the middle of so much holiday busyness. However, it has been so hard to pick one single poem. First, my favorite changes depending on my mood and where I am in life. Second, poems are all so different, I like to collect and enjoy them all. They are like that potato chip- you just can’t have one.
So, I am giving you two. I am giving you one that I come back to again and again and one that I have just discovered.
I love John O’Donohue and have shared many of his poems here. When looking at the poems I have set aside and come back, one stands out. It is short and I will sometimes use it as my intention for the day. Even though it is for short lines, it holds a deep truth and a longing that my heart shares.
Fluent, by John O’Donohue
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
The other poem I am sharing with you is a new favorite. A sweet friend read it this week and my soul sighed a deep sigh of hope, relief, and permission.
A Psalm of New Wine SKins by Edward Hays
Comfortable and well-worn are my daily paths
whose edges have grown gray
with constant use.
My daily speech is a collection of old words
worn down at the heels
by repeated use.
My language and deeds, addicted to habit,
prefer the taste of old wine,
the feel of weathered skin.
Come and awaken me, Spirit of the new.
Come and refresh me, Creator of green life.
Come and inspire me, Risen Son,
you who make all things new:
I am too young to be dead,
to be stagnant in spirit.
High are the walls that guard the old,
the tried and secure ways of yesterday
that protect me from the dreaded plague,
the feared heresy of change.
For all change is a danger to the trusted order,
the threadbare traditions that are maintained
by the narrow ruts of rituals.
Yet how can an everlastingly new covenant
retain its freshness and vitality
without injections of the new,
the daring, the untried?
Come, O you who are ever-new,
wrap my heart in new skin,
ever flexible to be reformed by your Spirit.
Set my feet to fresh paths this day:
inspire me to speak original and life-giving words
and to creatively give shape to the new.
Come and teach me how to dance with delight
whenever you send a new melody my way.
Is there a poem you continue to go back to again and again?
a life developing 