If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 2/29/2024 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

In the mad rush of this world, it’s easy to fall prey to the demands of doing and forfeit the practice of being. Our packed to-do list rolls over on us to the point of overwhelm. No wonder mindfulness practice has become popular: quieting ourselves through meditation, yoga, and other forms of precious idleness help us remember that we are “human beings” not “human doings.” Beyond that, we can actually choose being states that support our activity. We can practice being patient, being compassionate, being curious, being determined. We can adopt a state, so to speak. as actors do. Even beyond that, is to become one with the force of life that flows through as Danna Faulds suggests in her poem, Be The Energy. But how? Faulds says it starts with trust, which requires a level of vulnerability. Perhaps this is why she points out that we must go beyond trust and surrender to the flow of life through us in order to BE the energy. The beauty of her description makes the result of that trust and surrender so dazzling, it makes all the effort seem worthwhile. Thursday, February 29, 2024, the next date for our read-around, falls on leap day…so, take a leap and dare to be your own illumination!

Be The Energy

Trust the energy that courses
through you. Trust – then take
surrender even deeper.
Be the energy.

Don’t push anything away.
Follow each sensation back to
its source and focus your awareness
there.
Be the ecstasy…

Be unafraid of consummate wonder.
Emerge so new, so vulnerable,
that you don’t know
who you are.

Be the energy,
and paradoxically,
be at peace.
Dare to be your own illumination,
And blaze a trail across
the clear night sky…..

Danna Faulds
http://dannafaulds.com

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem describing the life force flowing through you. It could be through the marrow in your bones, the blood ciculating in your body, the nerves that excite and suppress you, the musces the move you, the senses that absorb the world, etc.

  2. Journal or write a poem about an experience or time when you trusted in a greater force.

  3. What is the difference between trust and surrender? Journal or write a poem about how these two states overalp and differ?

  4. Journal or write a poem tracking a particular sensation back to its source. It could be a phsyical sensation associated with a fear or anxiety or with a desire or joy.

  5. Journal or write an “ecstatic poem.” According to the book, Wild Poets of Ecstasy, an ecstatic poem represents a positive affirmation of the value of happiness, human connections, festivities, sexuality, and relatedness to the divine.

  6. How much joy are you willing to take into your life? Joural or write a poem about the gifts and the risks of being joyful?

  7. Journal or write a poem about what it means and what it might be like to be your own illumination.

  8. As usual, write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.