Fairy tales

enchantment
in the green skin of the frog
in the glass slipper
in the naked foot
in the midas touch
in the face reflected
in the shining armor
in the dragon's eye
large as a pool of clear green water
large enough to drown one's reason in.

If there is to be peace in the world,
there must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,
there must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,
there must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,
there must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,
there must be peace in the heart.

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart.
Try to love the questions themselves

Bridal Pink Boerner, United States, 1967

like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek now the answers, which
cannot be given to you because
you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.

Love is our lord and master.
It is not a wanton decay of the flesh,
Nor the crumbling of desire
When desire and self are wrestling;
Nor is it flesh that takes arms against the spirit.
Love rebels not.
It only leaves the trodden way of ancient destinies for the sacred grove,
To sing and dance its secret to eternity.
Love is youth with chains broken,
Manhood made free from the sod,
And womanhood warmed by the flame
And shining with the light of heaven deeper than our heaven.
Love is a distant laughter in the spirit.
It is a wild assault that hushes you to your awakening.
It is a new dawn unto the earth,
A day not yet achieved in your eyes or mine,
But already achieved in its own greater heart.

Fools scatter about their many attributes, the wise keep such within.
A piece of straw floats upon the surface of water,
a precious gemstone sinks to the bottom!
Therefore, it is best to disregard the seen
and concentrate upon the unseen.
Only within the latter may riches be found.

          Letting Go          

To let go doesn't mean to stop caring;
It means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off.
It's the realization that I can't control another.

To let go is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try and change or blame another,
I can only change myself.

To let go is not to care for, but to care about.

To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.

To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own outcomes.

To let go is not to be protective,
It is to permit another to face reality.

To let go is not to deny, but to accept.

To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish the moment.

To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is to fear less and love more.

         The Holy Longing         
·༺•༻·
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love making
sweeps you forward.

Distance does not make you falter
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
·༺•༻·

I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.
Unknown

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

This above all – to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try the best you can, not to let
the wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

         Auguries of Innocence         

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

><)))°> * <°)))><

Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning.
You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt,
or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree
and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Longing for the Beloved, I circled round ‘n' round.
Until I returned at last to the other that is myself.
Awakened, I remembered and claimed this truth.
Held in the Mystery is my Wholeness and yours.
Neither of us male nor female, nor light or dark,
Both timeless yet born new moment by moment.
Both bringing heaven’s intentions into the earth.
Now I can see you in your image, not mine.
Now I am free to love you, my Beloved Other.