Hi Friends, I hope you will take a bit of time to read my latest on Medium.com. I have shared the friend link with you here, so you can access it without impacting how many other free stories you can read on Medium. Just click on my name in the picture below. This is a longer read about making small changes, including my change from wearing a cross to a Tree of Life necklace, and my changing-up my need to hang on to a hurtful past in order to have a more hopeful future. Here’s to Hope that makes us hum and smile more. Peace, Jane
Tag: Spirituality
“Everywhere” – the third and final Poem in The Birthday Card Poems
Everywhere
Poem #3 in the Birthday Card Poems
By Jane Tawel
Everywhere, the Spirit rages
Through the world, and through the ages.
Blowing like the wind
Breath, like in and out,
Spirit of Imago-Dei,
Spirit of the heavenly way,
A whisper and a shout.
*
Spirit dressed in rags and riches,
In English halls, and Gaza ditches.
The Spirit loves the childless lady,
The wandering soul, the tiny baby,
the man of color, homeless girl,
and everyone throughout the world.
And everywhere, all humankind,
The Spirit of Love, can seek and find.
With just a spark of love and care,
the warmth of Love spreads everywhere.
*
Everywhere a soul is needy,
Everywhere a soul is greedy,
For the Spirit, not the prize,
Opening ears and using eyes,
To hear and see
To touch and be–
Why, that is where the Spirit of Love,
Can make a person worthy of,
A Christmas-sort-of-actuality,
Alive and well in you, and me.
*
The Spirit of true rhyme and reason,
Is not just for one single season.
For Truth and Love,
And Peace and Prayer,
Are ours for making,
Ours for taking,
Ours– always
And everywhere.
Wishing you and yours, and me and mine, a truer understanding of what the Spirit of the Christmas-type of love and joy can be for us each day in some small way, if only we “make it” and “take it”. Shalom, Jane
An Orphan Seeking The Great Spirit
An Orphan Seeking The Great Spirit
By Jane Tawel
June 9, 2019
I felt adrift at home within
Without, I felt a loss.
America’s vast greedy sins
Revealed themselves as dross.
I thought I might find Shangri-La
In Canada’s vast reaches,
But going there I saw it doesn’t practice
What it preaches.
I thought I’d fall in love with Spain,
But everywhere folk suffer pain,
One only has to take a glance
At England, Russia, China, France,
To see the world is wide and deep
In anger, sorrow, deeply steeped;
And looking through one’s foundling glasses
Does not make greener any grasses.
The Wise Ones counsel seeking Truth,
But don’t show where to find it.
I’ve spent long years just gathering clues
Now Spirit and Love must bind it.
It’s only inner peace combined
With outer love and open mind,
For Heaven on earth must find its start
Within a human’s contrite heart.
Oh, Great One Who created us,
Forgive our pillage of the Earth.
Please heal the hatred we have stoked,
Against our own and foreign folks.
Help me to find the narrow path,
So as not to incur Your wrath.
No matter where I live or roam,
Help me to treat the earth as home.
And may I live another day,
To follow The Great Spirit’s Way.
I offer You, my paltry best,
So, one day I may find my rest,
Not here in any temporal plain,
But in the Havens of Your Reign.
Until that day when I return
To dust and all the waste-lands burn
And world from World at last resumes
A safe, clean distance from The Doom.
When Mother Earth, reborn to life,
With no more evil, no more strife,
Will virginal, regain Her course,
Forever wed to Great Life Force.
Away from Earth’s small gratitudes,
I’ll seek the light, and love, and truth
Of The Great Spirit, Creator, God
And I shall humbly be awed,
By places, people, beings, times,
And through my feeble, awkward rhymes,
I’ll offer praise for all and All,
that spins around on this vast ball.
My heart is tender-footed.
My yearning is unwise.
You, Spirit of the Ages,
Please open my dark eyes.
Engage my hands to service,
In healing and in hope.
Accept this wandering orphan,
And purify my soul.
Jane Tawel 