A Blessing for Recovery

I bless you in the salvaging
of what really matters.

I bless your heart to be massaged
with finest balsam.

I bless all of your interactions
to be of compassionate understanding
and to resonate with healing sound.

I bless you with hands to uphold you
when you have no strength to stand.

I bless the wisdom of the ages to be clear,
a multitude of proverbs to fit your need.

I bless your own innate wisdom
to rise to the surface, benediction through pain.

I bless the silence of your day to be rich
and the moments to be calm water.

I bless you to receive the love bestowed
and to know yourself as never forgotten.

I bless the urgency of your spirit
to rest into the next step as it manifests.

I bless you to never feel lonely,
although tempted to feel so.

I bless you in the rejuvenations of time,
a journey with a particular pace.

I bless you to not feel rushed
and to be with the tears when they come.

I bless you to befriend your emotions
and to hear what each has to say.

I bless you to listen to your own inner voice,
the foresight of your life to surface.

I bless you to let things as they were, be as they were,
so that things as they are, may become.

I bless you with a handing over of reins,
a relinquishing of what can't be controlled.

I bless you to accept your limitations,
so that boundless measures may flow.

I bless you to lean back into the heartbeat
of the One who surrounds you, even now.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Faye Cornish Unsplash

A Blessing for Letting Go

I bless you with hands that open
under the pouring rain.

I bless you with a parchment
scraped clean, and made palimpsest ready.

I bless your old photographs,
and black and white memories.

I bless the letters you always wanted to write
to be swept up on the north wind, delivered

and the smiles long in coming
to ripple the day like tides on the shore.

I bless your soul with deep satisfaction
in the already and the not as yet.

I bless the mistakes you have made
to become for you a sage on a hill.

I bless your regrets to be your teachers
and your dreams to glow with a flame
that doesn't die out.

I bless your abundance to be generous
and your words to be good seed on the ground.

I bless your precious secrets to grow wings
and fly into the eternal light.

I bless your gifts and your talents
the hard work, and sweat of your brow.

I bless them to be taken and multiplied with always
more than enough to remain.

I bless your friendships and relationships
to oil your heritage with grace upon grace.

I bless the old conversations
to fall with leaves to the ground.

I bless you to let go of things as you
thought they would, could or should be
and surrender to ease your brow with what is.

I bless you with a celebration of wrinkles,
with the applause of a job well done.

I bless you with a laying down of what is heavy
and acceptance for what is to come.

I bless your hands to remain open
and your possessions to be weightless in your home.

I bless your palms to be willing
to receive what is on its way, a gift.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Oliver Pacas Unsplash

Tune into Your Sound

I emblazon the score of God's great music
across the wide opening sky.

I am a chamber of echoes from out of his heart.

I am an oboe played on the shore of Galilee
where angels tuck under each wave, a psalm.

Your Spirit writes symphonies of I CAN
and you dance, oblivious to worry.

Your cloak swishes the universe
and brings the unknowable close to my skin.

I give myself over to be loved by you.
I give myself over to be loved in return.

Your presence passes, my hand stretches out
from the cleft of the rock.

Small ambitions wash away on the tide,
as I tune into your sound.

Small ideals are relinquished in the immensity of you,
singing.

I refract upon your affirming eyes,
as many hands lift me over the verge of heaven.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Eugenia Maximova Unsplash

A Blessing for Pilgrims

I bless you with movement stirring from
within your deepest self.

I bless you with a compass arising
and a true way to go.

I bless your feet with the barefoot knowledge
of the earth and no restriction to your steps.

I bless your anchor and your sail
and a breeze to companion you through the doldrums,
to send you forth where you have not dared to go.

I bless you with a transparency of heart
and a loosening of what binds,

with the comradeship of kindred souls
to pass you a lantern on the darkest nights,

with the final destination to be set as flint
upon you, a tattoo of the finest maps
to guide, and alignment voice-to-voice
of sure-fire navigation.

I bless you to take hold of the hand
that is offered to pull you up when
you need it,

and for fellow travellers to abound
in grace and wisdom.

I bless you with the ability to move on
when the season has ripened,
and the ability to settle when it is time to stay.

I bless you Pilgrim with contentment,
knowing your ultimate heavenly call
is placing you here and now in the present.

I bless you with what longs enough
to keep the ache of what is too beautiful
at the forefront of your spirit.

I bless you with a will before the
great will, a humility to change
direction when needed, to admit you
have made a mistake and to learn from it.

I bless you with the quest of your life and
birth, with the call of your destiny
written upon your soul,
etched as treasure upon your heart,
beating with a rhythm that leads you home.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Tim Foster Unsplash

A Blessing for the Weary

I bless you with a spirit born upon spring

opening into the delight of a thousand buds

intent on sap and light.

I bless you with eyes that open on waking,

lapsing into dreams that take you

rippling back and forth from Heaven to earth.

I bless you with the memory of your

most beautiful days with no regret to accompany,

the refrains of your most favourite songs.

I bless you with a yes for all your no's

and a wide open expanse breaking out

inside of your soul.

I bless you with a hurling of old stale deeds

into the sea of no beginning, no end

and the forgetting of what is wrong.

I bless you with the small things 

revealing to you great mysteries,

a spiralling mathematical shell.

I bless you to once again feel your inspiration

a tide determined, with the determination

of dawn and the colours of earth turning into the sun.

I bless you with sleep uninterrupted,

with doubts appeased and hope beating with the blood

through every one of your arteries and veins.

I bless you to be able to see gratitude

and feel it on every breath, peel off every mask,

every label and step out in your brand-new skin, astonished.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Linus Nylund Unsplash

A Blessing for a Sound Mind

I bless you with a softening of voices
that have been known to shout.

I bless your heart to rise with outpourings
over your countenance, love.

I bless the anointing balsam to drizzle
between the hemispheres, a baptism.

I bless the neural pathways to belong
to the Mapmaker's whisper,

for original thought to retrain
and new branches to grow from the great stem.

I bless your spirit in redistribution
and for memories awash with forgiveness.

I bless you with the power of what is forgiven
and for the soundness of hands upon your temples.

I bless you with the possibilities of patience
and for the malice of the monkey mind to cease chatter.

As knees upon the cool earthen floor bow into silence
as knees bend in repose and a well worn heart lies down,

and a head lays upon a cushion and this becomes the very
gathering place of God, a staircase of holiness,

all that can be heard - angels walking up and walking down.

I bless you with a cognizance no longer tormented, kissed
with the kisses of the Christ who subdues all storms,

who causes temptations in the desert to be shown their place.

I bless you with the words, It is good
as God breathes over you peace of a blissful kind.

I bless you with an ease and repair of fragmentation,
alignment with the sounds of Heaven,
quiet when quiet is due

and pleasures of glory to soak upon the lobes
with a radiance of truth.

No carefully prepared remedy, no devised scheme
can do what can be done when Spirit calls out
over the hills and valleys of consciousness:

Be still, and know that I am God.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Nik Shuliahin Unsplash

Trajectory of Hearts

I soften the moment into listening, 

mentored by the wisdom of the aged

and the young bent on learning.

I find myself in the carpenter's backroom with a son

who made himself slow, intent, methodical,

an apprentice with a teachable heart.

Time ages the body
and yet pulls the mind into what is not time,
allowing a proverb to make itself known.

I must allow for action minimal
and internally stoke up the fires,
watch together with God the birth of a star.

I plan to be here, an observer,

until I may be there simultaneous,

until our trajectory of hearts align.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Greg Rakozy Unsplash

Together is a better way to travel

I am open to become,
the petals of my soul are responsive.

I will walk one step at a time
when the road calls for gentle progress.

Yes, I will put one foot in front
of the other, when the road is dim.

I am prepared to be wrong
and discover something I didn't know
about you or me.

Together is a better way to travel.

I am becoming, a field of many
flowers, instead of one particular bloom.

The fragrance is best when untampered
by human hands

and left to seed, carrying the memory
of the first flowers that showed up
on the rolling hills of Eden.

The ancient varieties don't always look
as well put together,
but their imperfection
is what makes them so lovely.

We will enjoy our own uniqueness
and will come upon a deeper sense
of you and me.

When we learn to move, at a quiet pace
until it is time to leap courageous.

Time ages our long ago plans
and we come upon a slow discovery
of everything new that is growing between us,
beautiful.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Nathan Jefferis Unsplash

A Blessing for Writers

I bless you with the major rivers of the earth
to run through your veins,
the Ganges, Yangtze, Mississippi.

I bless you with the flow of great waters
upon your inspiration.

I bless all of your latent ideas to materialise
from out of your DNA.

I bless the story abiding deep within
the cracks of the moment,
to be discovered, your hand on paper.

I bless you with a deluge rushing
in to fill your Okavango
and for wandering pilgrims to fall into
the oasis of your words.

I bless your voice to be heard from
the utmost heights of Mt Everest, Annapurna, Kilimanjaro.

I bless you with a blank page, a pen in your grip,
taken by the current of your dreams,
realising your own personal power,

disappointment swept away by the
mighty resilience of you, coming to life
in this place, being born upon a time and season

that has been waiting so long
to receive this epiphany:

your words arterial
channelling from out of your soul
straight into a sea of hearts,

torrential.

Jenneth Graser

Pixabay

Mercy Seat

Heaven opens above our heads
on the shouts of all who throw stones.

If we could suspend the moment
and partner with the cries of Stephen,

we too would be able to see
the Lamb of God on the mercy seat.

And the scales would fall away
from all of our eyes,

the stones would drop and knees,
the knees would bow.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Mike's Photos Pexels

A Blessing for One Who Has Nothing Left to Give

There is a blessing poured upon the head
of one who has nothing left to give.

The blessing from above the heights
oozes over the hair,

cascade-drips over the face,
the forehead glistens with it.

What is given to the one who has nothing,
who stands with empty heart, empty hands, empty voice

is a blessing of more than what can be given
to one who stands with hands
grandly occupied.

And when the one who is bereft of kindness
stands under the heights of kindness lavished,

the blessing drenches, slowly gives of itself
generous.

The anointed one drips
with the blessing given to the one who has nothing
left to give,

who has come to stand in the gift and
has learned to receive the gift

that turns all of those nothings
into something
that can begin
again.

Jenneth Graser

Photograph David Hofmann Unsplash

A Psalm of Broken Praise

Lord you have made yourself
to be my rearguard.

Your angels assign themselves
as ministers to all
who call on your name.

And I say, thank you
and the gratitude spills plenteous.

I have broken open my heart
as a vial of perfume.

I have poured the inner oil
over your feet beautiful.

I am coming through what fractures
into a greater praise.

I am entering by the gate narrow
to find a garden expanding on my sight.

I will put on shoes of the news that is good
and walk it holy into the ground

where healing herbs are bruised, the fragrance seeps,
and we are loved as we are.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Wang Xi Unsplash

A Prayer for All Creatives

I have paced myself with the paces of exuberance

and littered the floor with scrumpled-up papers.

I’ve peeled myself like a ripe fruit

and shared the segments, squeezed out juices.

Of grace, I have wondered upon

and peered between the slats of your kingdom,

but  you have been to me closer than

what is cherished as close

and have shown me the kingdom within.

You have handed me brushes, and a palette of colours,

You have reached out to take my hand

and kept my hand in your hand.

You are not in a hurry

and wait to hear my voice as it stumbles

in wave upon wave on the tide of your shores.

You have handed me a pen, and some paper on a table

and you have shown me the garden, on the edge of attention.

We have breathed the same breath, under the pre-dawn light

and thought the same thoughts, trembling on what begins.

There are times when your face alone is enough for my heart,

because the words have lain down, and gone into hibernation.

And when this comes, I mustn’t fight it, but take it instead

as the most intimate of invitations.

I feel the turning of what must be borne,

as it grows and lurches deep down

And finds its first breath when we least expect it,

howling to come out and make itself known.

So untidy, we are not made for perfection,

but find our truest expression when we run into ourselves,

to find the Son there is rising.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Johannes Plenio Pexels

Waking Up

I find you under crushed weeds lining the path
of our morning rambles.

Someone got here first and strew them out of the way,
pulled up by the roots.

How many things are you pulling up by the root
to reveal the turned over loam in us?

The sun briskly challenges the mountain,
which cannot hold back the pure poured-out light

generously misting the dew amongst reeds,
all standing like champions and witnesses.

I am being attended by the chorus of rooster,
a playful enterprise of birds so unafraid.

My prayers tumble out of my mouth
into the cracks of the valley, exposing lies for lies,
truth for truth.

We can walk here and stop being fearful of
what could be lurking in every unknown future.

We can run here and feel what it is to
have the blood surge through our muscles,

reminding us that we are a body too,
a temple called into the holy of a body-made prayer.

First thing in the morning, when the sun is bursting
at its seams with enthusiasm and there is

so much breath puffing out like clouds
all over the trails, and the day is waking, waking,
waking up all over the place.

I am waking up too.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Ban Yido Unsplash

An Archaeology of Time and Secrets

We fled the hungry streets
To find solace in upturned faces,
The eyes always speak what the mouth cannot.

The pedestal, such a lonely place
And craving for what can never fill,
The heart expands into precipitation and rain.

We are peeling the layers of earth
To dig up an archaeology of time and secrets,
Gently we brush away soil from each bone.

We have found inside of us a voice
Interlinked with the wisdom of generations,
A whisper is all it takes for these bones to rise once again.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Dane Deaner Unsplash

Join the Poetry as Therapy online Retreat - it's easy, just enter your email into the sign up form at www.secretplacedevotion.weebly.com and you will receive an email a day for 21 days in the comfort of your own home 1-21 June this year.

There Go I

Where the ones who search for precious metals
in the seams of the earth go, there go I.

The ones who leap off the edge of earth
to fly as flying foxes, at one with risk, there go I.

Those who dive below the corals under
nourishment of sun to delve for treasure obscure,
there go I with them.

To navigate the passages of hospitals to hold the hand
of one who has already been wept dry, there go I.

To look death in the face and show no fear
because fear has been exposed, can hide no more
I go there too.

Where the ones go who said, I will never
and who say, On the other side, that was not so bad,
after all, I could, I did.
There I wish to be willing to go.

The ones who left the verge of reason
and reasonable request to take a chance for the Beloved,

The ones who plundered darkness convinced
there must be something greater there than dark,

The ones who defied gravity in the face of all
fingers pointing, voices doubting

To find themselves much more than only human,
there I wish to be willing to go.

There I wish to say, I could, I did.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Jarin Bontrager Unsplash

Join the Poetry as Therapy free online Retreat 1 - 21 June 2018

Reach Forward

Lord, you have carried me behind the mountain
to speak what only I can hear.

It is necessary to reach forward by hiding
in your shadow.

You have settled me in the hollow of the earth
so that the soles of my feet may remember.

You have searched me for what, I do not know
but I have said to you, please, come.

There were knocks on the door I could not recognise.
You appeared as a stranger and I would not let you in.

Come to me in a way I can comprehend
and I will open every door in my house to you.

I want to learn the languages of your speech,
so that I do not need a translator.

I want to embed myself in the rumble of your voice
and my spirit will receive what my mind can't understand.

You are willing to surprise me out of my old skin
so that I may fall upon the ground at your feet

And find my true form, made before light
touched the first horizon.

Jenneth Graser

Join the 21 Day Poetry as Therapy Online Retreat 1 - 21 June 2018 by clicking here.

The Silent Place - a prayer

I pray to be lifted in beauty,
to see the cool bright day before me
and take in the music of garden,
the distant murmur of the sea.

To remember the stars above my head
whenever I waken
and the moon slowly turning
around the planet turning too.

To remember the continents afloat
and the sands over the mountain
at the beck and call of waves.

To enjoy each breath I am afforded
and to smile more than I have, to smile in the eyes.

To smell the freshness of time in the morning
instead of feeling chased all my life.

To learn the meaning of rest in a given moment
and to give back generously.

I am seeking to throw off this old skin that
hinders movement.

May I be born all over again
and see everything for the first time?

May I be able to appreciate the
glorious life I've been offered?

May I take your hands and be led
in peace and quiet even though there
is a noise, a chaos all around me.

Let me be in the silent place
of knowing I am loved.

Amen.

Jenneth Graser

Photography - Bethany Legg Unsplash

Halfway to the Other Side

We have shifted sideways
where shadows lengthen the lawn
and we have parted with grieving.

The pathways through the garden
have been to us a maze of high hedges
manicured to perfection and yet,
too high to see over.

A cul-de-sac appears around every corner
and we have persevered so as to navigate
ourselves into other dead-ends.

A hole in the hedge reveals
a window through which to peer
and there is the house we have been
searching for.

A river runs under the house
and cools the feet after so long a walk.
Every room is lined with books
where words are threaded into the
quilt of lives lived halfway to the other side.

The trees still speak to us, as always.
But we have asked the gardener to kindly
open more doorways for us.
He told me, they have been there all along.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Thomas Gearty

A Mother Has a Mountain Inside of Her

A mother has a mountain inside of her,
but her head is above the clouds.

She must be prepared to feel the
rivers run from a collection of rain
into the sea at her feet.

A woman stretches out her clenched fist
to feel a sunbird in the pool of her hand, bathe
and then fly off.

It is important to know
when to hold onto the dirt and the root
and when to cleanse your hands in the fountain.

Birds swoop from her soul into her heart,
catching insects on summer days softened by rain.

Love is here beating upon her.

She has only to observe the threshold of her womb
to know how much love
has passed through her body.

She is a threshold of many doors
and will let the feelings find a way on
through.

Wind must usher forth the rest of it
with seeds finding a place to grow,
carrying only the burdens away.

The sky clears with high clouds cirrus
speaking of everything hopeful.

Inside of her is a place no noise can reach.

She is floating on a sea of courage
bearing her aloft.

Under water a whole world is thriving unseen,
but such seekers of silence dive into it
and come up themselves reborn,

ready for dry land once again.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Victor Carvalho Unsplash