February 2025 – Jane Tawel

I Hope to Start Living, so as Not to Be a Ghost

by Jane Tawel

I Hope to Start Living, so as Not to Be a Ghost

By Jane Tawel

I am not in denial,

I just want to live.

And yet I choose death daily –

Not the good kind of death,

Not like the monks or saints —

Not like Jesus’ advise to take up my cross —

Not the kind of death that leads to Eternal Life.

No, I choose the kind of daily death,

that keeps me from being aware

of Where I am

What I am

Who I am

Why I am

When I am — because when I am

can only be Now,

and yet — Alas!

I prefer

the pains of the past

and the fears of the future

just of course,

in order to give my ego

something to think about.

If I didn’t prefer not to live in the Beautiful Now,

why would I keep choosing not to?

Without true understanding,

of Who I AM —

I daily choose death,

because I choose not to be alive.

I am living as if I am already a ghost –

Haunting life —

when I am called to be Soul,

Hallowing this world.

If I blame or feel guilt about the past –

I am not living.

If I worry or obsessively try to plan for the future —

I am not living.

The only time I can live in is —

Now.

Ghosts live in the past

and they haunt those present living

because they have no substance any more.

I am so often ghost-like,

haunting my life and the living,

insubstantial in the moment,

even though my body is still here.

When my body is no more –

will only a ghost remain?

Are we not told

by those Ones Who truly lived while they were here,

that the choice of what we shall be hereafter

is the choice we make of

what we are today?

Ghosts fear the future

because there is no-thing of them in it,

there are no solid actions for them to take

in a time that will never come,

for Time never comes,

but always, only is Here. Now.

The hungry, anxious apparitions that

manifest within me,

the phantoms of my psyche

whose endlessly hungry, disembodied maws,

which I continually feed today

will disappear before tomorrow.

All their sound and fury,

signifying nothing —

will Evaporate —

Poof! —

No Thing will remain.

Ghosts leave no trace.

Only meaninglessness remains behind.

The only meaning we ever have

is found only when we awake to

this precious, divine moment.

Ah, Breath of Life! How Good it is to taste and see!

I woke up –

and realized that when we are told,

“The Kingdom of God is within you”,

It means we choose now –

What we are and

What we forever shall be.

And there is instruction in that.

And there is also a tiny seed of Hope.

Shall I live as a ghost or as Spirit?

In Spirit as in Truth?

In Spirit, IS in Truth.

And the only True Truth,

the only Truth that I can know,

is this hallowed Present, Precious Moment.

What I shall be is what I am.

Forever begins Now.

Shall I be a Holy Spirit?

Or continue as I am

and be a ghost?

The choice is mine.

While I yet live,

the choice is mine and Thine.

“Awake, my soul!

Make music!

Sing!

Awake, my glory!

I will awaken the dawn.

I will live a life of praise,

for steadfast Love

and faithfulness,

is great upon the Earth,

and reaches to the Heavens.”*

“Every morning,

when we wake up,

we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live.

What a precious gift!

We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours

will bring peace, joy, and happiness

to ourselves and others.

I vow to live fully in each moment,

and look at all beings with

eyes of compassion.” **

“Stand by the roads,

and look,

and ask for the ancient paths,

where the good way is;

and walk in it,

and find rest for your souls.”***

*Psalm 57:8

** Thich Nhat Hanh, “Peace in Every Step”

***Jeremiah 6:16

The Endless Gift of Lavender

by Jane Tawel

Meditation 1 on Lavender:

Each day, I will seek to find at least one Good thing. Today, I have two: a gift from the Red Cross for something so easy for me to do but so Good. And a reminder of the lovely, lovely world on my doorstep. The beautiful (and my favorite) lavender was a gift from Clarissa, my beautiful much loved daughter. And it is a daily haven and heaven and gift for my dear, dear friends the bees.

Meditation 2 on Lavender:

Reminders in an attitude of gratitude and the Spirit of Presence and further meditations on the glories of a lavender bush: 1. The world is full of beauty, love and hope if “those who have eyes to see will see”. 2. If God provides for the little birds, how much more will we have all we need if we only need “just enough” — our daily, momentary “bread”? 3. Our five senses are the most amazing treasures — time for this child to learn to stop squandering them and enjoy all the present gifts they continually offer. 4. Birds and plants are just so cool and great.

Free from The Beautiful Prison

Free from The Beautiful Prison

By Jane Tawel

February 13, 2025

Thoughts embrace me,

not as the lover that I think they are,

but as the ever multiplying,

tightening, restricting coils

of a deadly snake;

which in the end, and endlessly,

goes ‘round and ‘round and ‘round,

sucking out all my life, until it

Strikes!

And all my thoughts and

the “I” of me

will be no more.

What a waste of Time

my thoughts have been.

Words create and — Oh!

How I love them!

And yet words, when given

so much power

deny the True I AM.

Words create a false me,

deny the Real, and the real me.

So many words,

so little Time.

Words create barriers to my freedom to exist.

Why do we hate it so much when words escape us?

Why do we hold on to words that

we once thought belonged to who we are —

even if they hurt us?

With our first word, “Ma-ma”,

we make our choice and in our last breath,

we regret words spoken and unspoken.

“Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”*

Words are lovely as they reach across

the chasms of our communication,

the hopes of our interactions,

the rallying cries as we come together.

Our words create stories that can keep us —

safe and warm.

We are our own Scheherazade.

Words also keep us apart.

And as they spin

their endless tales of that which was

and fear of that which might be,

they create the webs which constrict

the formless, namelessness of Life,

like a giant spider

we weave and weave and weave .

Oh, how I adore a good abstract word,

a metaphor, a sensory description,

a symbol!

Oh, how I long for words that make me feel

Loved, cared for

Seen.

But oh, what better joy

to live in the Spaces

to feel without words,

to Be.

If only I could escape my words.

Words — The Beautiful Prison.

Wordless, Nameless One,

Accept my prayer,

with groans too deep for words:

Create in my, Oh, God — just…

Create.

Create me like a baby

with only cries and sounds of joy

to tell you how I feel

and who I Am.

No — Create ME, O, God.

IAM.

Let me be a new and emptied skin-clothed vessel,

ready for the new wine of ***

Being —

unattached, unthinking,

with only this one thought –

of only this one Word —

The Word from the beginning,

that was, and is, and evermore shall Be.

That Word beyond Thought,

Beyond Ego, beyond Me;

the only Meaning

that shall never, as I will, die.

“But I, in one short sleep past,

will wake eternally,

and death shall be no more;

death, thou shalt die.”****

Awake, My Soul! and be emptied

to be stilled by Holy Stillness,

and in peace, to live,

As One.

With many thanks for those whose thoughts and words are high above mine own.

*Robert Frost, “The Road Less Taken”

**The Bible

***Jesus, The Christ

**** John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”

And along with these, thank you to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle among so many others.

One Step, One Brick

by Jane Tawel

In 2018, I posted a quote by that great “worker in the fields”, Dorothy Day:

The sense of futility is one of the greatest evils of the day.…People say, “What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.

Reading this post of mine from a previous time of great and deep weltanschuaang (2018) and my quoting Dorothy Day back then, I remind myself that the feeling of futility or hopelessness is static and keeps one feeling incompetent to do the smallest things. And I am reminded that Mother Teresa said that not all of us can do great things but that even I can do small things with great love. And I believe that ultimately as Judeo-Christian wisdom teaches, “only three things will remain”: trust in Something bigger than ourselves; hope that, as that great Black Preacher, Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the universe bends toward justice; and Divine Love, available to all humans, Love that ignores ego and self-interest for that which lasts. And the greatest thing that shall remain, beyond nation, beyond “stuff”, and even beyond the self, and indeed, the only thing we can ever know of God, is Love. But even our deepest held belief is a fragile thing and it wavers with each storm, my friends. It can be very hard to see the light in the face of darkness, so each moment I will try to forget all the things I think I believe and I will simply walk forward, one step taken at a time, by the sheer will of a freeing Love. By going through suffering, not trying to get around it, we do find peace. One step. One moment. One small act of love. One hand reaching out. One at a time.

“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step.

“My peace I offer you too. Not the peace this world offers, but a peace that will pass your wildest imaginings, a peace that passes your beliefs, a peace that passes your understanding.” — Jesus, The Christ,

I shall take my responsibility in this present moment seriously, but I shall not look at the fortress of hate and greed being built against the True Truth. I shall mourn but not hate those who tear down that which others have worked hard to build, not seeing through their foolishness and greed and hatred the Good things — things of justice, and open-mindedness, of sharing and acceptance and care and kindness. I shall lay down my one small brick at a time in my own back yard, not as a wall to keep people out, but as a wall to support the vines of love that I choose to plant and hope to grow. I shall plant one small seed at a time, and trust that the Mountain will move.

Will I Stand Up?

by Jane Tawel

Will I Stand Up?

By Jane Tawel

February 2, 2025

Will I stand up,

if courage fails?

If lies prevail

and all seems lost?

Will I stand up

when others scoff?

When I’m cast off

as weak and frail?

Today I stand

upon The Rock

and weep to see

a House once strong,

now willful, prideful

tearing down

its firm foundations

its Cornerstone,

erecting bent beliefs

on shifting sands.

Will I stand up

when hope is torn

from bleeding Heart

from bleeding Hands?

No —

I shall fall…

But I will raise

No flag,

No creed,

No weapon but,

The Banner of

God’s Love for All,

Yes! — “All!” I’ll cry,

with my last breath,

and though I can not stand —

I’ll crawl.

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