Tag Archives: poetry

Earth School

Do you believe your soul is returning here in various lives to work out all that you need to learn to evolve? Or, are you a person who perhaps believes in only one life, but also the eternal aspect of the soul after that one life? Or, are you someone who does not believe in either; there is one life and no afterlife?

I’m not here to say what is “right or wrong”, or what someone else “should or shouldn’t” believe, but only to share my own process on this idea of the evolving soul.

From a very young age, I always felt within me the presence of a higher creative power at work in the world. (If you’re sensitive, you can feel it between the lines in everything. The Native peoples call this “the web of life”.) However, exploring my feeling of this higher energy within the Christian church as a child, and again later as an adult, did not satisfy within me a suspicion that we need way more than one life to encompass all the learning a soul needs to perfect and move back to the One. I also could not accept the idea of a punishing God. (What truly loving being “punishes”?) I also could not accept the idea that such a God would dole out a life of poverty and strife to one person, while giving another a life of relative ease and wealth.

I think we have various experiences, over as many lifetimes as we need, to learn the important principles that various spiritual masters have come here to teach us. And, within each life we, and only we, are responsible for our choices, and the outcome of our lessons. (Taking responsibility eliminates the victim mentality and blame.) Ofttimes we also have other souls that will return to us again within several lives, different bodies playing different roles, so that we can work out our lessons together.

Religious institutions, although they play a role of bringing people together to explore spirituality, can also be one of the great dividers in society. What religion who is truly oriented to nurturing a spiritually evolved society, would condone or promote hatred of another? There are many paths to becoming spiritually evolved, and should we not be simply all helping each other on that path, if the positive evolution of humanity is indeed the common goal?

Eternally

We don’t remember
our other soul lives spent here,
alien Earth plane.

Swaths of sand smooth and
soften hard edges of lost
civilizations.

We visit, then with
infinite impermanence,
return to dust too.

Soul Mate

Eternal surprise,
all the hellos and goodbyes,
right there in your eyes.

Eternal Rhythm

The golden leaves fall,
fearing not the decay of
a coming winter.

Death is essential
to the renewal of life –
All will spring again.

If each in nature
can feel this simple rhythm,
so can humans too.

Why do we resist?
Our fears overshadow the
truth of our being.

But the fall leaves know,
they show us that we too will
green the tree anew.

Read it online, or download the PDF here.

The Moon Laughed

8 Replies

The moon lit my blind
last night, illuminating
my insomnia.

“Silly girl”, she laughed,
“You fret so over nothing!
Time to let it go.

“The ‘reality’
that torments you is but a
a false illusion.

“Politicians come,
inevitably they go;
they’ll be forgotten.

“Plant your corn, hoe it
well, and I’ll help you grow it;
read your almanac.”

“The seeds feel my pull,
the waxing and the waning,
the eternal show.

“Drink of my silver,
purify your thoughts, trust in
your infinite self.”

Then the light passed, but
moon’s laughter echoed as I
drifted to slumber.

“The Moon Laughed” © Susan L Hart 2025

Save or Savor?

Leave a reply

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world, and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” ~ E.B. White

I know exactly what E.B. White means…

Must it be a choice? Perhaps the answer to E.B. White’s dilemma is to savor the world every day, while we save it. Or maybe savoring it, in actual fact, saves it? (Gratitude and reverence.)

It’s a very delicate balance. I believe we are here to do both.

What do artists and writers have to say about the world? Speaking as both, I think they fall into two main categories. They either want you to see the beauty, so you’ll savor it. Or, they want you to see the ugliness and pain, so that you’ll help to make it better. I think there is value in both approaches. My art (drawings and paintings) have always been about the beauty. In my writing, I try to walk a line of showing both sides of the coin, because life is hugely complex, and we cannot truly appreciate anything without tasting its opposite.

On days when the state of the world gets me a little bit down, I come back to thoughts of purpose. This is a very beautiful world (the Earth and we humans who inhabit it), one to be savored (life is a gift), and therefore one worth saving from that which craves to destroy it. Part of my personal journey has been one of finding the correct balance of save and savor, because if one is not careful, “save” can begin to overtake.

I hope you have a beautiful Sunday, however you spend it. For me, Sunday is purely a savor day, one of rest and to focus on the beauty.

Inspirational Quotes

“We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”
~ Joseph Campbell

“What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
~ Chris Abani

“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.” ~ Amal El-Mohta

Life Is a Gift

It’s a blue-sky day,
one of those
beauteous blue-full,
joyously jocular,
splendidly splashy,
exceptional days –
I long to shout
LIFE IS A GIFT
in unmistakable
letters across the
blue shiny yonder,
to imprint them
indelibly on your
mind, so you’ll –

Remember when
the dark clouds roll
in, on a day when
life feels pissy and
oh so problematic,
to take a deep breath,
and close your eyes,
and gently pull the
gray gloom aside,
to see those big
oh so true words
I etched on blue
for you, so that
you’d never forget –

Life is a gift.

My Gifts from the Sea

7 Replies

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

The quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh reminds me of one of the first Christmases away from my family whilst traveling. Heart sick in Australia, I was missing them terribly, so I went for a walk on a beach at Glenelg, Adelaide to center myself.

I had walked that beach quite a few times before, but there were never more than a sparse few shells. That Christmas Day the beach was covered with them. I’m a huge lover of the ocean, and I walked in bliss for a long time, soaking up the sunshine, immersed in the beauty, and collecting a few shells to takeaway. I felt that some angel had heard my prayers and laid these gifts on the beach to soothe my soul.

My family’s heritage includes Scottish, and I love the stirring sound of the bagpipes. From a balcony high up on one of the apartment buildings overlooking the beach, a lone sentinel dressed formally in kilt, played them for me as I walked under a cloudless azure sky. I can still see and feel all of it.

What were the chances? I suddenly did not feel so bereft; I was clearly cradled by energies watching out over me.

Everything is part of One. Never doubt it for a second…

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I Am Ocean

Snowflakes
falling softly
tentatively
pure, white
innocent
new life.

I Am one.

Earth
cold hard
dormant
I land here.
I am ice, I am lost.
I wait.

Spring comes
warm sun,
I melt into
playing, trickling
tiny Rivulet.

I am born.

Playful riffles
gently learning
to flow
to maneuver
to be Stream.

Time passing,
stream is good
but I want more,
then suddenly –
rushing, roaring,
swirling, foaming

I become River.

Sometimes sunlight
flowing smoothly,
other times storms,
rocks, gashing
hard, struggling.

Learning
to be with rocks,
trees, sky,
other rivulets,
and streams.

I Am more.

Time passing,
waiting and
wanting,
with a deep
hunger inside
for vast.

And finally,
I let go
of myself
and transform,
to endless, infinite
water ocean.

I die.
I am born.
I Am One.

The poem I Am Ocean is from Soul Journey: The Poetry of Life. It’s free to read or download here.

For Small Creatures Such As We

2 Replies

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” ~ Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was right, it’s our love for our families, our love of life that keeps us sane and going in an insane world. But will love sustain us forever? I suppose in the higher realms, yes. But what about here on Earth, right now? While some madmen are threatening each other with atomic weapons, and others are building AI they hope to use to control human civilization, where are the true humans in the equation? You know who I mean: We the ones who are thinking about our work, our families, how to build a life within all of this madness. We love. And there’s the crucial difference from the “inhumans”. We love.

We are caught up in the minutiae of our lives, and perhaps not always paying attention to the bigger drama unfolding before us. Yes, I think our love has the power to save us, but not in some fairy tale, Pollyanna way. Spiritual warriors love, yes, but they are also prepared to defend that which they love, with eyes wide open.

There is a very good word, it’s a very short and powerful one, but much underused. That word is “No”. It is important to simply say no to and turn our backs on that which appears to not have the best interests of humans at heart. Then we can use our energy to imagine and build the world we want, together.

In It Together

In a system that feels
heartless and remote,
now more than ever
we must reach out to
others in kindness,
in a personal way,
human-to-human.

The problems of
all of humanity
are now breaching
our own backyards;
it’s no longer possible
to turn a blind eye,
we’re in it together.

“In It Together” from Humanity’s Lament: Poetry for Our Times

Susan L Hart 2025 | HartInspirations.com | Free ebooks