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That knows you to your roots,

Always awaiting your deeper befriending

To take you beyond the threshold of want,

Where all your diverse strainings

Can come to wholesome ease.

FOR WORK

May the light of your soul bless your work

with love and warmth of heart.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your soul.

May the sacredness of your work bring light and renewal

to those who work with you

and to those who see and receive your work.

May your work never exhaust you.

May it release wellsprings of refreshment,

inspiration, and excitement.

May you never become lost in bland absences.

May the day never burden.

May dawn find hope in your heart,

approaching your new day with dreams,

possibilities, and promises.

May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.

May you go into the night blessed,

sheltered, and protected.

May your soul calm, console, and renew you.

FOR ONE WHO HOLDS POWER

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,

Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,

May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,

May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

When thirst burns in times of drought,

May you be blessed to find the wells.

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly

And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary

For the stillness where clarity is born.

May your work be infused with passion and creativity

And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness

To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.

May your power never become a shell

Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.

May you welcome your own vulnerability

As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal,

The source that will guide and bless your work.

FOR CITIZENSHIP

In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

FOR A LEADER

May you have the grace and wisdom

To act kindly, learning

To distinguish between what is

Personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.

May you never put yourself at the center of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself,

Building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May those who work for you know

You see and respect them.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence

In order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you,

May the graciousness with which you engage

Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the gifts of the mind

Through reading and creative thinking

So that you continue as a servant of the frontier

Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,

And you never become a functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening,

The healing of wholesome words,

The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,

The decorum of held dignity,

The springtime edge of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers

So that you can evoke the bright fields

That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends

To mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you

A true adventure of growth.

AXIOMS FOR WILDNESS

Alive to the thrill

Of the wild.

Meet the dawn

On a mountain.

Wash your face

In the morning dew.

Feel the favor of the earth.

Go out naked in the wind,

Your skin

Almost Aeolian.

With the music inside,

Dance like there is no outside.

Become subtle enough

To hear a tree breathe.

Sleep by the ocean,

Letting yourself unfurl

Like the reeds that swirl

Gradually on the sea floor.

Try to watch a painting from within:

How it holds what it never shows.

The mystery of your face,

Showing what you never see.

See your imagination dawn

Around the rim of your world.

Feel the seamless silk of the ocean

Womb you in ancient buoyancy.

Feel the wild imprint of surprise

When you are taken in by your lover’s eyes.

Succumb to warmth in the heart

Where divine fire glows.

7                   Beyond Endings