Annapolis Reiki

01/02/2025

START CLOSE IN

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own,
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

…

START CLOSE IN
David Whyte : Essentials
Many Rivers Press © David Whyte
….

A New Year’s poem, if ever there was one. Carrying that certain air of self-admonition we all need to go in the right direction, and do the right thing. This piece was inspired by my growing familiarity with Dante's 'Comedia', particularly the first lines, written in despair after being exiled from his beloved Florence. It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to start again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again, into what looks like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world can only be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground, but from the very center of our being. The temptation is to take the second or third step outer step, not the first inward one, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, often into the source of our grief and our reluctance: an attempt to finesse the raw vulnerability and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited. For a better, truer New Year - the invitation is always, always, always, to 'Start close In.'

…

Woman Walking
Yorkshire Dales
Photo © David Whyte
December 2015

01/01/2025

Beautiful words for reflection as we begin a new year. Happy 2025!

Continue
by Maya Angelou

My wish for you
Is that you continue

Continue

To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness

Continue

To allow humor to lighten the burden
Of your tender heart

Continue

In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter

Continue

To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined

Continue

To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you

Continue

To remember your own young years
And look with favor upon the lost
And the least and the lonely

Continue

To put the mantle of your protection
Around the bodies of
The young and defenseless

Continue

To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise

Continue

To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected

Continue

To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
And welcome good

Continue

To ignore no vision
Which comes to enlarge your range
And increase your spirit

Continue

To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing

Continue

To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name

Continue

And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally

12/31/2024

Recalling words of John O’Donohue on the threshold moving into a new year of possibilitiy and potential. Wishing you the best 2025 you can imagine:

“Though your destination is not yet clear,
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be at home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”

Excerpt From “A New Beginning” by John O’Donohue

12/23/2024

Star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect Light ..

~ John Henry Hopkins ~

Art by Eva Melhuish

12/14/2024

"Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourself, as to the only truth." ~ The Buddha

12/09/2024

The Peace of Wild Things

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.

For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

11/30/2024

11/28/2024

Happy Thanksgiving!

✨🧡✨

11/21/2024

🍂🥧🍗🦃🍂
Love Heather ✨

11/14/2024

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the blessing, 'For One Who is Exhausted,' from John's books:
Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)