Run With The Unexpected

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

We are grateful to Rupali Bhuva for offering this hand-made painting for this reading.

So many portals to you

Hindu, Jew, Sufi, Sikh,

artist, lover, dancer, explorer, peace-warrior.

Children, strangely familiar,

are rushing up to greet and initiate you.

Joyful ravens are singing you

their call and response from scattered trees,

while humming humming birds dart through the bushes below.

A mystic moon facing your face is fading into morning.

Run with the wind into places unknown to you

where fantastic fungi and trembling ferns and wild lilies

are weaving exuberant streams

for you to ride on, into the heart of wildness.

When a too predictable life has become stale and tired:

Run with the unexpected.

Learn the secret.

Keep your promises,

the sacred ones,

to those you love,

those who trust and depend on you,

yourself.

Break your promises,

the other ones,

the habit-threads you’ve woven

into the net that has caught you.

How?

Run with the unexpected!

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Aryae Coopersmith co-founded the House of Love and Prayer in 1968 with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and is ordained as a Jewish spiritual teacher. He is the author of Holy Beggars.