Belated birthday poems

Since I couldn't get to my email, I missed two poems sent to me on my birthday and I want to share them with you.

The first is from Louie Crew, founder of Integrity (for GLBT Episcopalians and their friends). I was privileged, for several years to be the chaplain to an Integrity chapter. Louie always sends me a poem on my birthday. Here is this year's....

reVisit

Imagine the five minutes before your mother
learned that she was pregnant with you.

Imagine the five minutes before your father
 found out.

Let those minutes tick slowy by.
Fill in any blanks with your best guesses.

Connect intimately with their world
before you were.

Imagine the five minutes after they knew,
their readjustments, their expectations.

Then reconnect intimately with your gestation,
when you were becoming,
when you were a presence and a promise.

Celebrate your wholeness.
You are a presence and a promise still.
Gestate anew.
For this is your day.
reJoy it.
reJoice in it.
                                             --Louie Crew



And then, from my dear friend, Ann Overton, who I've known since 1987 and worked with in the Mastery Foundation for much of the time since. She sent this....

When we are alone on a starlit night,
when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn
descending on a graove of junipers to rest and eat,
when we see children in a moment when they are really children,
we we know love in our own hearts;
or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho,
we hear an old frong land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--
at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values,
the 'newness', the emptiness and the purity of vision
that make themselves evident--
all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
                                             --Thomas Merton

She added, "happy birthday, Jim. And keep dancing!"


If you ever have a thought that  you'd like to give me joy, send me a poem....