Cheap Forgiveness v. Genuine Forgiveness

How Can I Forgive You: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To
Janis A. Spring

We are all searching for an answer, some new approach, that frees us from the corrosive effects of hate, gives voice to the injustice, and helps us to make peace with the person who hurt us and with ourselves. . . . I hope I can give you the courage to forgive, and the freedom not to.

You Have To Love

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

-- Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Wish for Another Poem

The Wish
Louise Gluck

Remember that time you made the wish?

     I make a lot of wishes.

The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.

     What do you think I wished?

I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.

     I wished for what I always wish for.
     I wished for another poem.

Green Garnet

"It strengthens stability in lawsuits and challenges, transforming lower forms of response and reaction to loving forms of reply."

-- CrystalVaults.com (link to source)

A Knowing That She Was Okay

So Much More
Terri St. Cloud

yes, there was sadness,
but there was so much more.
belief in herself.
strength that kept growing
and a knowing that she was okay.
and would always be okay.
no one could take that away now.

Independence Day

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

--Alice Walker

An Indifferent Universe

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death . . . our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

-- Stanley Kubrick

It Didn't "Happen for a Reason"

Everything Happens
Emily McDowell

Please let me
be the first
to punch
the next person
who tells you
everything happens
for a reason.

Life Sucks v. Thank You

Life Sucks and Thank You
Emily McDowell

"Life Sucks"
and
"Thank You"
cannot coexist
in the
same
moment.

Crying Yes Risk Joy

Snowdrops
Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.