Please Come Home. by Jane Hooper.

Please come home. Please come home.
Find the place where your feet know to walk
And follow your own trail home.

Please com home. Please come into your own body,
Your own vessel, your own earth.
Please come home into each and every cell
And fully into the space that surrounds you.

Please come home. Please come home to trusting yourself,
and your instincts and your ways and your knowings,
And even the particular quirks of your personality.

Please come home. Please come home and once you are firmly there,
please stay home awhile and come to deep rest within.
Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.
Please get a deep, deep sense of what it's like to be truly home.

Please come home. Please come home and when you're really, really ready,
And there's a detectable urge on the outbreath, then please come out.
Please come home and please come forward.
Please express who you are to us, and please trust us
To see you and hear you and touch you
and recognize you as best we can.

Please come home. Please come home and let us know
all the nooks and crannies that are calling to be seen.
Please come home, and let us know the More
that is there that wants to come out.

Please come home. Please come home,
and when you feel yourself home, please welcome us too.
for we too forget that we belong and are welcome,
and that we are called to express and fully and be who we are.

Please come home. Please come home,
you and you and you and me.

Thank you Earth for welcoming us,
and thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,
touch of love for welcoming us.

May we wake up and remember who we truly are.

Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.

ITHAKA. by Constantine P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
Hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery,
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
You'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
Stirs your spirit and body,
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
Wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along in your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.


Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
May you stop at Phoenician trading station
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.


And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't haves fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Only a Person Who Risks is Free. by an Unknown author

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach for another is to risk involvement.
To expose your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To believe is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk
nothing.
The people who risk nothing, do nothing, have nothing are nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel,
Change, grow, love, live.
Changed by their attitudes they are slaves; they have forfeited their
Freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

You Reading This, Be Ready. by. William Stafford

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
Sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
Than the breathing respect that you carry
Wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
New glimpse that you found; carry into the evening
all that you want from this day. The interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life-

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?