Life – Jane Tawel

Getting Old

Getting older has a lot of downsides but on the plus side, when you know people already assume certain things about you because of the color of your hair or the texture of your skin, you don’t mind as much as you did when you were young if they think you are crazy or weird if you speak your mind. Yesterday, I had a medical test — another one (ugh) and I looked at the very efficient and young technician and when we were finished, I looked her in the eye and smiled my crooked old-lady-toothed smile and said “Enjoy every minute of your life. It goes by faster than you think it will.” When you are older you get more medical tests and that’s a bummer because you realize your health is going, going, and will sooner rather than later be gone, and especially if you are a woman and an old woman at that, you realize the medical profession prefers to think it’s all in your head or that removing the pain is the answer because there aren’t really any answers that will “cure you” of an old body breaking down and letting go, but on the plus side, you have a lot more empathy for people who come into this world with two strikes against them healthwise, or who live a lifetime in this prejudicial world, and prejudice-wise have always had to deal with people judging them on how they look or don’t look and you feel a new sense of love for humanity and you hope that kind of not getting anything in return kind of love translates into a new sense of love for yourself — for others AND for little old you. Because empathy just might be the one thing that when translated into truthful, take no prisoners, absolute, crazy Love can change even an old heart and body and mind and soul. Sometimes when people see you as an old lady somewhere like a doctor’s office or a grocery store or your workplace or even your own home with friends and family, you want to say, “you don’t really see me. The real me is not this old shell.”

And maybe that’s just another lesson to learn, that if I am very, very quiet and patient, and open the ears of my heart and eyes of my understanding, then I might see the real you, the real him, the real her, the real them and when I really see them, well, then all I can do is love. Because the only thing in the universe that is worth seeing and holding on to is the Truth of Love. I choose to hope that Love is the one thing that might remain forever. Love never seems to have grown old for me, and I think that is because in whatever this real world might be or become, Love never grows old.

How Do I?

by Jane Tawel

“Ocean Wave” by smhowell2 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

How Do I?

By Jane Tawel

September 9, 2022

How do I stop blaming myself?

Renaming myself in a thousand ways?

How can I listen

to the tides of my dreams?

And though they may seem

just a whisper — a nudge —

how do I let my soul

roll with the waves that

The Ocean would send my way?

I have one name,

One name.

And I will play only the good kind of games,

like a child I will play in the now.

And I will neither blame nor shame —

and though I may not know exactly how,

I will not project nor expect nor attain

any thing that will harm you or me.

No, not any of you,

nor any of me

will I stop from the Flow of The Ocean.

I will see only who we can be —

You and me —

as I seek to become

and to be and be

One.

Set Us Free

A Poem by Jane Tawel

“Monarchs in motion” by farflungphotos is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Set Us Free

By Jane Tawel

September 3, 2022

Set me free from the future.

Set me free from the past.

Set me free to live into

The Truth that will last.

Set me free from stagnation.

Set me free from my needs.

Set me free to change wholly,

and to set new dreams free.

Set me free by forgiveness

of the great and the small,

and as I forgive others,

may I forgive myself, all.

Set me free from the prison

that only I can create,

by attachment to anger

and fear, grief, and hate.

Let me open the prison doors

and free memories’ hostages.

Give me strength to release,

tomorrow from bondages.

And when I would put

heart or mind back in jail,

May The Spirit of Love for All Life,

fast prevail.

Freedom is not a longing

for nothing to lose,

Nor is being free, gain

for the ego to use.

Freedom is never greedy,

nor self-serving, nor fearful.

Freedom is never needy,

but in needlessness, cheerful.

Freedom is the soul’s seeking

of Love’s peace that will still

any hurt, fear, or longing

and by Grace, all is healed.

Oh Creator, of heaven and earth and of All,

May my spirit be freed from the sins of The Fall.

Let me claim my true power that by You, I’m designed,

to be free to create in me, new life divine.

May I free those who’ve hurt me

and forgive once — and all.

May resentment and bitter seed,

take no root in my soul.

Daily let me forgive

those I know and in general.

And as I forgive freely,

make my joy and love plentiful.

Oh, True Life is just waiting!

Our souls long to be free!

When I loose bonds of judgement,

I free God in you and in me.

May I use my soul’s freedom

for true care to employ.

And God, moment by moment

set my soul free for joy.

May my soul find true freedom

in The God who is One.

May our souls be united,

in only Truth, which is Love.

May I trust in The Word

that brings Heaven to Now.

And though I don’t know how,

let my faith become strong,

that I live now, in God’s freedom,

and for all my days long.

Let my daily prayer be:

Set me free.

Set him free.

Set her free.

Set them free.

Set us free,

Dear Creator,

Oh, Dear God,

set us free.

My Worry-Bed, My Garden-Bed, My Bed of Nails, My Ocean

by Jane Tawel

My Worry-Bed, My Garden-Bed, My Bed of Nails, My Ocean

By Jane Tawel

February 23, 2022

Here am I,

in my Worry-Bed,

my Bed of Nails,

my wanderings,

down trails and trails,

of past and future ruts well-worn.

I’ve come to make my nest of thorns.

I lay me down,

my soul to rend,

my fears to tend,

like blood-sucking friends,

I let them in, again and again.

Dreams aborted, bashed and torn,

I fill the spaces in my head,

with raging demons, dead —

and not yet born.

Here I am,

in my Garden-bed.

I come to plant and tend and seed.

I lay me down,

my soul to keep,

and furrows clean and straight,

my seeds of fear are shorn,

right at the roots.

From weeds of worry,

stones of grief,

I plough the field of dreams towards truth.

I water drop by precious drop

the flowers of joy and plants of peace.

Without a need to grasp or climb,

but letting go of all but faith

in God’s protecting, mindful vines,

that reach and curl and hold and keep

Gardens of peace and love entwined.

I rise up from my bed of nails,

exhausted from the fight and flight.

Oh, to wake and die no more,

to know all blindness, is now sight.

Oh, to find my tossing, turning nights,

have reached at last that tranquil shore.

I rise up from The Ocean-Bed

A wave, unique and wholly me.

I, a wave, in God’s great Sea,

and I am I, and I am Thee.

And in Love’s cradle,

even night is Light.

When We Shall See, We Shall Know

“Two Paths Through the Tangled Japanese Forest” by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

When We See, We Shall Know

By Jane Tawel

November 14, 2021

When we see,

that others also see,

and even though we do things differently,

we all seek to be,

that which no matter the endeavor,

seeks to live forever,

why then,

we know in part,

somewhere deep inside our hearts,

that if we’re honest, what we really know

is all we do not know.

It must be true,

it must be,

for when through Time

and history,

the stories repeat and reveal,

that evil must be repealed,

and there must be something more than this,

and that all of us just want some respect,

and to believe that all people are valuable,

and that the Earth is good, so very Good,

and we are all just trying our best

to live fully and someday, perhaps to rest

in heaven, nirvana, or bliss,

because the Truth has always been there in the Myths.

When I get a glimpse,

that you believe that too,

why then I know

no matter Who we think we worship,

it must be true.

There are lots of jots and tittles that we focus on,

and thereby lose the locus on–

the journey’s not completed in a day.

Our compasses get skewed along the Way.

And while we age towards rebirth,

we must re-calibrate True North.

Insisting there is just one passage,

is never Love’s True Message.

You call it Dharma,

I call it God’s Law.

I call it Christ,

You call it All.

I take the cross,

You empty you.

Yet words are words,

but truth is Truth.

We see through mirrors dimly.

Our expectations lie.

When peering through this veil,

we won’t pass through, until we die,

what’s on the other side of strife

somehow, we all have faith will be new life.

So, what I call my point of view,

can have a different name than you

call yours. We all have precious worth

in this great journey to rebirth.

Today I finally stopped to hear,

and put away my childish fears

and sat awhile and did my lessons

in others’ sages, books, and heavens.

And when I stopped my fear’s critiquing,

I found in All, we all are seeking,

the same great hope, a faith, The Way,

to make tomorrow, better than today.

No one’s belief is ever perfect,

but if my choice has this effect:

that Love is growing day by day,

then I am walking in The Way.

No matter what we think we know,

the only way to truly see,

Heaven, The Light, The Christ, The Path,

is not by doing simple math

of you’re wrong here, and I’m right there,

but losing hatreds born of fear,

and living lives of grace and care.

And as we stride this petty pace,

and rush from holy place to place,

we sometimes need to simply– Stop.

and Breathe.

The Truth is not, as yet, reality,

at least on that we all agree.

Yet, if I seek, I’ll surely find

That every heart, and soul, and mind,

is longing, hoping, always yearning,

for that Great Love beyond our learning.

What I don’t know,

I’ll someday see,

was always there, right in front of me,

and All our Love will live eternally.

Breathe, on me, Breath of God,

Breathe through me, in me,

Breath of Life.

And when all breath is gone,

may my true being be One with Love.

You don’t know now.

I can’t see all.

But One Day, hand in hand, we shall,

be free

and see.

And I will know your true name,

and you shall know mine.

The Bucket List I Never Made, Come True

The Bucket List I Never Made, Come True

By Jane Tawel

September 13, 2021

I have never made nor contemplated making a bucket list. I have absolutely nothing against making one, and I love to hear about other folks’ items on their bucket lists. I find them incredibly revelatory and hopeful. And of course, like everyone, I play the game of “someday, I would like to….” or “before I die, I want to….”. When a person’s dreams die, they aren’t just old, they are dead, no matter if a physical body indicates otherwise. As The Bard says, “we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep” – all too soon that sleep comes, so have at it with those Bucket Lists while ye may!

So, when I kick it, you won’t find a hidden Bucket List among my many pieces of revelatory, self-incriminating written logs. Then yesterday, something happened; and though I never went in search of greatness from a list of To Do’s Before Doom’s Day, a Bucket List item was thrust upon me. Shakespeare once more, said it first: “Some are born with Bucket Lists, some achieve their Bucket Lists, and some have Bucket Lists thrust upon them.”

I am visiting the beautiful (there is just no other word for the topography here) State of North Carolina where one of my darling daughters works and lives with my grand-furbies, Artemis and Apollo. Apollo is up and awake with me right now, being the young whippersnapper that he is, and he is bouncing all over the house waiting for his mistress to get up and feed him. I am forbidden to feed him, and if he bites my finger in hunger or starts chewing on the cord of my laptop, I am supposed to somehow catch him and shove him in his little time-out cage until said darling daughter arises to give him his breakfast. It’s hard being a Grand-meow who can’t spoil her dear grand-furby, but, the wrath of an adult child is nothing to mess around with I have found, being four adult-children down at the count. I love them more than my own life, but I miss them when they were little tykes and all I had to do was hold them tight when they were upset or kiss them when they were sad or laugh along with them at some silly thing that never made sense in hindsight but was just a way to joy in the moment. Now I am a helpless old thing against the tides and times that they have inherited from me personally and from my generation in general and from all the good and bad we try to control in the world and in ourselves with various degrees of success and failure. May the sins of my children’s mother not be carried on to the third and fourth generation*, but may I be forgiven the consequences of my mea culpas in their lovely, much-loved lives and futures.

My children all have Bucket Lists. They don’t share a lot of the items with me and that is as it should be. Bucket Lists should not be made into common currency or YouTubes, Tik-Toks or even movies with famous actors filling in for real people. Bucket lists should have a few sharable items: I would like to visit New Zealand. I would like to finish a Marathon. Stuff like that. But mostly Bucket Lists should be those hidden, cherished, held-close desires of the heart that let us dream of what might be in a perfect world, personal and public. They should be full of items that let us imagine being something other than what we are today, with a hope and prayer of doing at least some of those things. Most importantly, Bucket List dreams should be about being all that we imagine the Human Being is capable of doing and being, whatever that might mean to me, or you, or my child, or your friend. And the lovely thing about a Bucket List is mine doesn’t have to be at all like yours to be valid and important. Bucket Lists just might be the most uncompromised by cultural, national, or religious symbol of the most personal / communal Dream-Worlds of Endless Life Possibilities ideas in existence. I mean, isn’t Heaven really, just another word for Bucket List? Isn’t Heaven is also just another symbol for that endless eternal ability to be and do everything that the human divine soul was created to be and do? Isn’t the ultimate Bucket List really just another form of desiring a glorious, godly, divine, and endlessly available and possibility-enhanced Eternal Life?

A Bucket List is not just about creating an amazing future though, as I found yesterday. It is also about our deepest selves’ broken pieces being a little bit patched up; our short-circuits reconnected. The items on a list about things we want to do before we kick the bucket, reveal what got broken, or subverted, or short-circuited or stopped just that little bit short of realization. A Bucket List is not just about what may happen but what should have happened. We like to imagine a better future when we can’t deal with the bad stuff in the past or the present, (another reason so many religions got the underprivileged, non-wielding Bucket List folks, like slaves or minorities, living for Heaven, instead of focusing on what could be done about the present problems in their lives). Thinking about the fact that we are still alive enough to have hopes, dreams and desires – big ones, like the ones on a Bucket List – return us to the possibilities we imagined when we were children; when we still had dreams, when as children we envisioned an eternal future without any limitations. Our Bucket Lists are about finally going skydiving, because we dreamt of flying like Peter Pan, when we were children; or we want to check off a safari, and riding an elephant, because we imagined as children that we were wild animals roaming the jungles. When we were young, we romped together in our imagined worlds of play and in our freedom from soul-sucking jobs, or relationships that were hard, or physical ailments that meant we were unable to walk or move without pain, let alone check off our list the desire to surf Maui. Bucket Lists return us to not just hope for the future, or a belief we can fix something in the past, but also to at least for one minute, a joy in the fact, that “where there is life now, there is hope”. Bucket Lists are really about suddenly being present to ourselves as valuable, worth-while, dreaming, hoping, believing beings.

Yesterday my daughter and husband and I took a ferry to an island in North Carolina with a lighthouse. Seeing lighthouses is literally on my husband’s Bucket List, and we were able to check that off his personal list, with the help of his beloved daughter, by seeing two of the beautiful lighthouses that still operate today. Lighthouses were created to keep sailors and ships safe from the world’s dangerous waters and unforeseen shoals. Maybe Bucket Lists do the same for people.

On our way to the island yesterday, we passed Shackelford Banks. And as our captain, slowly passed by the banks, there they were — my eyes are tearing up as I write this, and remember it now– just as yesterday without anticipation, I found myself silently crying as I saw something that I immediately knew had been on my Bucket List without my ever understanding it was there. There in front of me were three wild Shackelford ponies, one a foal still gangly and unsure in the shallows.

When I was about eight years old, and my parents were a mess and going through a divorce that they never told their four kids about, and at a time I didn’t realize how what another relative was doing to me wasn’t appropriate, and my childhood seemed to be getting snatched away from me but I didn’t know it, my father, gave me a book called “Misty of Chincoteague”. It’s a famous children’s book by Marguerite Henry. You should read it if you still have a bit of child in your heart, or at least get it for a child you know and love. Later, when my dad let me choose a pinto pony for my own, he let me call it “Misty”. After a few years of my broken family being in a strange existence that isn’t about Bucket Lists at all, my mom remarried and moved us away and I rarely saw my dad and never saw Misty again. I guess she must have died, along with my own childhood.

Yesterday I saw those wild ponies, not on the Chincoteague of my youthful book-inspired dreams, but on Shackelford Island, while I sat next to the dreams I never knew I had – a husband of thirty-three years and one of my own dear, beloved children, grown to adulthood with her own shared and private dreams and Bucket List items. And the little girl I was, Janie Karen, came rushing up to meet me in the sight of those horses, and I realized: “I made it. I made it here to see this – to see them – to see Misty—after all these years. I did it. I made the dreams I never knew I had come true.”

And I checked off an item from the Bucket List I have never made:

#1: I will keep my childlike faith. I will continue to imagine and dream and look for the wild ponies in life, where ever they may appear.

“And it shall come to pass, that your young ones shall be divinely inspired; and your old ones shall dream dreams; and all will have the ability to plan the future with imagination and wisdom.” **

*Deuteronomy 5:9

** Joel 2:28 (paraphrased by me)

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Our Little Life-Boats

by Jane Tawel

Our Little Life Boats

By Jane Tawel

August 22, 2021

A long, long time ago and only yesterday, the materials for making my little life’s boat, were gathered in secret by the DNA of my Scottish, Irish, American Indian ancestors. But the real craft, the trued and tried boat itself, was crafted by the Great Crafter in the secrets that stretch back to the Beginning and stretch forward to the End of Time which never is. Like all carrying agents, large and small, puny and mighty, all that sail on this Ocean we call Life, or The World, my boat is unique and also it is exactly like every other little boat as well. My little boat, so small compared to others, yet just as specially made, will sail, in spurts and starts, or travel full-steam ahead, and go and go until the boat is moored someday as it was meant to be in the Eternal or until it crashes on the rocky shores of Ego or Despair. This is the truth about all sailing crafts, though many never know it because we either tie our boats up on shore, or we create a false shore in the water. But all true Truths try to teach us that our boats were made for motion in the ocean.

I am a little sailboat, who has long had the need for The Wind in my sails. I am lucky that quite early, I was taught what sails are for and what they are not for. I was as unlucky as many when my sails were brutally torn or holes were punched in the hull, the very soul of my ship. But I was not as unlucky as many, and I have managed. So, I have rebuilt my little boat many times with the help of others and that thing that true sailors call luck and that saints call grace. I have kept my faith in The Wind, which no one can control, and yet it exists. I have often sailed in the right direction with the North Star and Morning Star as guides. I have often sailed in the wrong direction and lost my way. Mostly though, I regret to confess, I have mistaken a mirage of my safety while moored to the dock for what I was meant to live as life on a boat.

There are many great ships that have sailed The Ocean, and sail it still, mighty and amazing in their superiority to most of our little folks’ small crafts. There are great ships with names like Caesar, or Pharaoh, or Titan of Industry, and many of these boats become enormous, powerfully engine-ed ships, making their way through The Ocean without need of The Wind, barely feeling the waves, never fearing the storms, and barely knowing they are moving at all, more like stagnant cities in the water than moving vessels. They put aside their sails and have no more need of The Wind. They take what they need from the Lands they conquer and leave behind. They take oil and slaves and buy more life vests than they could ever use; they sail their gigantic boats, boats that could house whole nations but only have enough room for one’s self. These have stopped being boats at all, and we look at those ships and we all want to have one of those ships, too. We want to be safe and saved and unafraid with everything we will ever need forever and ever, amen. And we look at our little tiny battered, torn-sailed little boats and we hate them and we hate us and we want to be them, the big safe ships. We look at the great steady cruisers and we long to have no need of The Wind; and we yearn to be in the Ocean but to control the way the Ocean takes us, like the great shipbuilders seem to do. And we forget that we are all created to be working sailors, not passengers. And we ignore what our heart tries to tell us, that even those with the biggest ships, will one day too find that The Ocean is bigger than they are. Perhaps when The Wind has wrecked the big ships upon the shoals of shallowness, or the sandbars of Eternal Truths, they too will long to once more sail a little boat.

Perhaps we will all, large and small, no matter how safe or how broken we think our boats are, someday find that The Ocean sends us an unlooked for buoy or a suddenly appearing piece of the Mast’s Wood; and we will each have one more chance to leave shore, and grab on to what The Ocean provides, and we will once more, like children, relearn a love of sending our little crafts out into The Ocean.

My boat’s sails have been tattered and torn so many times. I was not born a good sailor, and perhaps that has saved me. I have had to rely on The Wind’s benevolent appearing and disappearing, on the Ocean’s grace in storms and dead calm. I have had to depend on the help of fellow travelers who sailed alongside me, sometimes just keeping me company in the loneliness of Ocean life, sometimes teaching me something vital about how to sail, sometimes showing me what not to do by their own foolish choices at sea, sometimes sharing a compass that helped me navigate. And sometimes there have been those fellow sailors who, with great love, have helped me pick up the pieces of my little boat that I had allowed to break apart when I hit some shoals, or had left to rot in dock. And every once in a while, there was no one to help me, but only Someone to whisper across the waves:

“Fear not. Be still. Have faith. And know what you think you do not know. Don’t look at the waves. Keep your eyes on Me.”

I would like to say that I have been sailing The Ocean for six decades now, but I have mostly left my little boat docked uselessly in port. I kept thinking I was safer on shore, tied up to the Pier, with those I thought were peers and I felt already the salvation of knowledge of the things I had read about on “How to Sail” without ever needing to do the things it takes to set sail. I could tell you how to sail, but I rarely have experienced the thrill and dangers of sailing. So, I have spent a lifetime mostly feeling I should be happy that I had a little boat but never really knowing the purpose of my boat or why life seemed mostly rudderless and my sails sagged depressedly, longing for A Wind I would never risk meeting head-on. I have mostly lived by peering out, rather than journeying out. I have stayed on shore with all the best charts and maps but rarely finding the courage to launch my craft again and again, failure after failure, frightening success after frightening success, prophetically, mysteriously, in weakness and in strength, in death first and then life, baptized again and again by misadventure and death at Sea, and by setting my course, going into the Deeps, into the Pontus, into the waves left by The Wake of He who first Crafted and Who crafted the Sailor in me.

Last night there was a Red Sky and so I awoke today hoping for a sailor’s delight. But this morning the sky is still red- Warning! Warning! This morning the Ocean is covered over by Heavens which are a shade of red, red the color of shed blood; blood like the blood from two huge hands mangled by the nails of working His Boat and sailing The Ocean like no One has ever sailed it before or since, though we who know are supposed to have tried. And I am afraid. And I am uncertain I even know which direction to go. And The Great Sailor and all those before me who have managed to sail in His Wake are calling me to set out, while the sirens of safety in the numbers docked on shore make more and more knots in the ropes that tie me down.

What will my story’s end be? People call that a legacy, but most of us just leave with an unfinished story. I will not be leaving a beautiful houseboat, or massive warship, or richly outfitted yacht behind for those who carry on in The Ocean, those few who sailed close enough to my little craft to say, “I knew her” “My boat sailed for a time with hers” “I saw her boat on the shore”. I will have no lasting control over what becomes of those who carry on my boat’s DNA or those who may have learned something about their own boats by the teachings I have done or failed to do on “How to Sail”. But one thing I am learning. If I leave my little boat safely moored to this shore; if I am tethered to the sandbars of cares and needs and self and greeds; if I keep setting sail only to turn back again to dock my fears and doubts and insecurities and failings, instead of facing them head on, sailing into The Wind; if I do not daily, moment by moment, cure and polish and then test the seaworthiness of my little boat, I will never actually be in the boat. I will spend my Time, looking at my boat from outside of it. I will spend my Life, looking at my Life, from outside of it. If do not let the Winds fill its sails, my boat will never be what it was crafted to be. If I don’t let The Wind fill me, I will never be what I was Crafted to Truly Be.

A boat that is moored to the cares of the shore, can’t leave a wake. A boat leaves a wake when it is moving through The Ocean. We are each uniquely created by The Great Ship-Crafter to live life in the Ocean. We are given the ability to calm the waves and quell the storms, if we only have enough faith to start sailing, and once we start, to not look back at the sirens, and not look ahead at things that are mere mirages, but to point our little boats Due North, and let The Wind sail us towards what we were meant to call “Home”. Because if you are sailing The Ocean, one day you will wake up and realize that all along, you have been carrying your true home with you. Your little life’s boat has always been your Home.

Despite what any of us try to tell ourselves, none of us has ever seen the Far Shore from this shore. It is only when we are in The Ocean, that we understand that we were neither created to stay safely on this shore, nor were we created to try to reach the other Shore. We were created to row as hard as we need, to crew alongside those who sail within our latitudes and longitudes, to drift when we can’t feel The Wind and wait for Her to fill us again, to float and enjoy the beauty that is above us, below us, and all around us as we travel; to navigate with both honest fear and wise courage, and above all to be at Home when we Move and keep Moving within in and upon The Great Ocean.

What will I leave in the wake of my life? I pray that the flotsam and jetsam of my poorer decisions and weaknesses in sailing, will be carried away by The Great Ocean’s grace. I pray that my wake will leave a clearer sense of direction for those who sail behind me. I pray that there will be a small wake from my life’s little boat; a wake that leads others Due North, a wake that I leave when my boat is no longer seen by any but those on the Far Shore. I pray that above all, my wake will send waves to both near and far shores that swoosh with something that sounds faintly like something The Ocean would breathe, something like a person who had dipped her hands into the water and made small little circles of waves, something that sounds like what water would sound like if it were breathing in and out, ebbing and flowing. I hope that I will set sail enough times that my life-boat will leave a small little wake that sends waves gently lapping towards the world’s shores, and the children’s little life boats; a sound of waves in my wake that whispers something like this:

Shhhheeeeeee loooooved. Sheeeeeee whoosshhhh, llllllloved whiiiisssssh. She loved. She loved. She loves. She loves. Love….. Love……Love……..

Life-Lines — a poem

by Jane Tawel

Life-lines — a poem

By Jane Tawel

March 19, 2021

When I was young,

my mind and heart

were intertwined

like scribbled lines.

When one is young,

separating scrambled lines

is the monumental task

of growing-up.

I failed at much of it

but some lines straightened,

into the miracle of

Due North.

The dots and dashes,

the broken, mended bits of line

Still encompass and still

compass me forth.

When I became

Two, and then more;

and “my” became “our”

heart, mind and soul;

We formed a new me.

And I took the bow of us in hand, and

formed a straight arrow;

a line, shooting, aimed,

undeviating in communion,

unswerving in love;

propelling my life.

A streak of light —

like the tail of a comet.

My love for you

became the trued lines of fortune

in the palms of my hands.

My love for you was

a life-line branching out,

like the shoots of roots

from an unbowed, unbending tree.

Like a line with no end,

I became

my love for you.

Now I grow old

and the lines of my life

form circles.

Circling, and circling, and circling;

back and around, back and around…

and sometimes I grow dizzy,

and sometimes I become whole.

The center holds

in the spiral of my life.

Sky and Earth in Rain- 4 Poems

by Jane Tawel

Sky and Earth in Rain

Four Poems

By Jane Tawel

March 13, 2021

Poem One

Sky’s brow sweats with labor;

the earth is replenished

with heaven’s pleasing perspiration.

Earth, in her turn, turns.

Round and round and round

flinging ocean, sea, and pond

back into Sky’s opened-mouth face.

Sky as Heaven, Earth as Gaia,

powerful in servitude to each other;

delighting in shared toiling.

Earth dances, opening herself up

to Sky’s rain and —

both, so in love!

Heaven and Gaia merge,

symbiotic in creation.

Poem Two

The blues of sky are borne-away

and seeming dead in grey hues,

mourning clouds as black as burial clothes,

the world looks up at the bereavement.

Only the old folks will watch the sky

and know —

Surprising endings make the best stories.

Ah, the sky’s eyes are tearing-up!

Only the parents know

the welcome oxymoron of the heavens’ happy tears.

Light, though hidden, eyes though clouded,

Love’s light, like the sun, never leaves the heart.

Rain is heavens’ tears shed in joy.

The skies know that nothing ever really dies.

The casket opens around the keening clouds.

The heavens resurrect themselves

pouring the gift of life

into earth’s open-armed delight.

Poem Three

The canopy of sky folds,

and through the gaps of cover,

all heaven breaks loose;

the earth is bathed from head to toe.

And dirty roots and filthy feet and pining pinnacles,

are washed with grace of falling rain.

Poem Four

The sky husbands the earth,

his seed pours forth,

and earth open’s up to sky’s embrace.

Love, given and received;

the over-whelming mystery of earth and sky,

true soul- mates, wed forever,

bearing all.

The earth opens to

all sky’s love -spent pourings.

And at earth’s breast

all children are fed.

New life from married bliss.

Our Shakespearean Year

by Jane Tawel

Our Shakespearean Year

by Jane Tawel

February 27,2021

Our Shakespearean Year “of our discontent” drags on as we have “much to do about nothing” and it looks as if “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will creep on at this petty pace, to the last syllable of recorded time”; mostly “signifying nothing”. “We have seen better days”. But on the plus side, we have learned that “we know what we are, but know not what we may be”; and while “the course of true love never did run smooth”, we humans are still “what stuff as dreams are made of”. Let’s remember even if we would never choose this, “some people have greatness thrust upon them”. As we approach a spring in which we wish things were normal again, let’s “Beware the Ides of March” and remember that “nature does require her time of preservation”. “To be or not to be” is a matter of staying safe, staying sane and staying diligent. If you think this “lady doth protest too much”, I apologize for my “lack of brevity”. Yet there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy”. But “friends, Chosen, countrymen, lend me your ears” but once more: “let us love each other more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space and liberty”. “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better”. So keep masking, keep tasking, but remember if you are alive you have a “treasury of ever-lasting joy”. And to each of you “here, I hope, begins our ever-lasting joy” as “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”. “The miserable have no other medicine but hope” and now vaccines; so get yours as soon as you can. And when you despair turn outward, yes, “God shall be our hope, our stay, and our lantern to our feet”. Now I must go, ah friends, “parting is such sweet sorrow but I shall say good-bye, til it be morrow; my necessaries are embarked! Adieu!” When this is all over there are a few I must admit I am glad we will “be better strangers”, and my friends may not recognize me as I have become “as fat as butter”. But though the past year has often seemed “as tedious as a twice told tale”, remember that “love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”. So “from the records of our memories, we will wipe away all trivial records”, and keep “remembering such things as are most precious to us”. And frankly sequestering has reminded me that, “our lives, exempt from public haunt, find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything”. “Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy!” “I love long life better than my husband loves figs!” Oh folks, “the time of life is short, to spend that shortness basely were too long!” So “to thine own self be true” and just do something good for yourself today, because “nothing will come of nothing”. My “parting is such sweet sorrow” for me but but I know you are thinking, “for this relief much thanks!” But I thank you for your “flattery in friendship” since “I count myself in nothing else so happy, as in a soul remembering my good friends”! Be assured that “self-love, my friend, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting”. So grab on to your best purpose today and believe, “it is not in our stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves”. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. And Please — if you only remember one thing that Shakespeare said, remember this: “Thy life’s a miracle”!

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