Poetry

When You Start Receiving

Pauses of peace and love in the midst of the chaos

Sitting on my bed, right leg tucked in, left leg — dangling, I touch my right foot with left thumb through black cotton socks, massage a few strokes —

Gone.

I sit in a sunbeam of quiet.

I wonder! Can a slow stroke of my neck or hair bring peace, the same peace as mantra meditation, or watching breath?

Can every atom tingled in touch take us to space?

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� 🌿�I appreciate you considering this poem! Thank you “Dancing Elephants Press” for publishing it.

We are fortunate when we spot a loving message traveling our way by text, Zoom, phone or in-person and can pause to take it into our hearts. We can feel it. We can feel that goodness when we send an encouraging, loving message too.

What other happy moments (glimmers) might we take in when we pause to truly take in with our senses of touch, taste, hearing, and smell?

Touch is especially a portal, as reflected in this quote, “Consider the sense of touch. Witness how its power hath spread itself over the entire human body. Whereas the faculties of sight and of hearing are each localized in a particular center, the sense of touch embraceth the whole human frame.” — Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, pp. 194–195.

As you well know, there is much going on in the outer world, and triggers and challenges AKA teachable moments that can stir up our inner worlds in truly challenging ways. We can balance stresses with pauses to turn down the noise, so we can smell the fragrance of peace and embody more and more moments of joy.

As L.R. Knost says, “Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”

🌿 You may enjoy “How Sight and Touch Can Help You Deal with Stress”, “Decompress with All Five Senses” and “Using Our Inner and Outer Senses” from a series by Kathy Roman, published by Baháiteachings.org

✍ — Published by Libby Shively McAvoy at Dancing Elephant Press. Click here for submission guidelines.