Ora et labora

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Secular prayers to hold your hand through the apocalypse(s). Take what you need.
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Coffee or tea?

A mantra: choosing wisely, choosing to love the very fear in me.

Lilian
Jan 25, 2023
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So many of my fears are visiting
what do you do when yours visit?
_
We must treat them like guests,
a guest knows when to leave.
We get them coffee and somehow it signals, this visit ends here.

The wishes I once had

I keep conjuring the smell of coffee beans,
waiting for her to leave
I keep brewing the grains of my worries,
with my finest china at hand and a heat protective sleeve

“Family”

She sits there persistent
“expressive-agnosia” is the ill of those who cannot read social cues
maybe she has that, maybe she is ill or poor and cannot pay her doctor’s dues!

I see her looking at my window sill
just one moment ago a seagull was visiting

castles with no doors


Sea gulls don’t seem to fly
they tend to drift giving their wings to the sky
An offering.
What if I drift? will the sky have room for me
wait, what am I offering?

She is still there
I see old scars on her hands too many and too orderly to be an accident
I smell the old on her scarf, too loud for deaf ears
I feel the pain in her heart, as if it broke and no one was there to hear it

She brings so much fear to my doorstep, my living room, to the edge of my feet
yet she says no word, she just sits, but I can hear her heart beat

I have survived every guest

I eventually tire of waiting, waiting lets no room for living
and as I see the heart rate on my faceless watch fall
I brew tea instead, two cups, and one life to un stall
you are welcome Mara
you are welcome here,

for Mara and me, a mantra:

Taormina coffee and the sun

I love every part of me
Every part of me is free
****
I Pray I love every part of me
The sick, the poor, and the elderly
Every part of me is free.

Paris coffee and the Sun

Every one of me, I see,
If we are fire I shall witness me
The ember, the light, the warmth, the moth and the ongoing catastrophe
I will stand at the edge and I will soften
Lightly lightly, light will protect me

Fodder

Inviting Mara for tea

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival…

Welcome and entertain them all!...

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in…

—Rumi

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