Journey of the Heart

This poem actually did not start off as a poem... The beginning part started off as a prose piece I wrote last December when I found out that I had breast cancer. My body floated between the stillness of winter and the movement of my being. I held the illness like my winter. What claimed my body had me pause and come to a place of reclaiming me; physically and spiritually.  My time of pause came to me not only to heal but rejuvenate a new me. I found deep within my sanctuary a place to hold space for this change to my being. These words echo through me, " I will not sink too deep  that I forget myself n ot fight for what  I can claim to be mine ." I did not let anger or allow sorrow to consume me. Instead, I held the song of my soul and moved through this time of embracing grace.  As I now come full circle from the scars of surgery, chemo, radiation, I found this piece as a Facebook memory and decided to resurrect it as a poem. The song of my soul is cla...

There is something thrilling about a storm... The thrill begins  as the air starts stiring, and bits of moisture, leaves, and all manner of flotsam and jetsam are uplifted and drift through the restless ether. God’s elements become vividly apparent. The weather of the world is not under our control; and in this mechanized world we’ve come to live in, the stirring of a storm is a reminder of the tiny place I occupy in this vast universe. In the tenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita , called The Opulence of the Absolute , there is a verse, that begins: " Of purifiers I am the wind..." , I find that this chapter encourages me to meditate on God by seeing him in all of creation, the vision that the divine is in all things, both animate and inanimate. It personalizes God; in this meditation the vision of a supreme artist comes to the fore, and the art is that which feeds, loves, and sustains us in everyway. At the end of the poem I contemplate how I don’t have much to ...

I believe that talent is the result of love... In my forty years of teaching art and poetry, the word talent has always been questionable. Usually, students feel that they have no talent and become discouraged early on. To that I say: Ignore all those who want you to believe that you have no talent. Take risks! Listen to your heart! Believe in yourself more than in those who criticize you. Learn from those who have achieved, but always believe in your own instinct and original style when creating important work. Failures are stepping-stones to success. Accept them and move on.   That is the key: a willingness to fail and then keep going. I have found that those who feel loved and supported can do this most easily. In my own experience, when I began drawing and writing poems at age five, my older brother, who was ten, criticized me. He insisted that I never did anything good.   But I never let his words discourage me because my mother greatly encouraged every creativ...

As we enter into Winter Solstice, the darkest of all nights, I light this candle... This candle represents the flame that I light upon my prayer altar. This flame represents the light of my soul's glow, though at times it feels as though the dark can consume me. This flame represents the fierce fire of my heart forever burning with infinite love. Light that becomes my beacon in my winter; both figuratively and literally. Though winter clothes us with dark, we enter deep to the sacred space of our being; our eternal glow.  I Light This Candle by  Maureen Kwiat Mehsenberg   I light this candle, calling to the void of me- the brilliant glow of my soul, what is unknown and silent- in shadows so deep flame of my returning now calling me. I light this candle, to the intentions of me- fragments of my changing, what illuminates the empty spaces between - I enter them becoming whole. I light this candle, for the dark of me- reaching through the blackness, loo...

During this years long warm Autumn I sorted through my photographs to make a slide show to capture the season... This time of year, as the summer fades, a melancholy takes its place in my heart as I prepare for the cold of winter, as I watch all the fading green, the drifting leaves, dropping and rolling in the street, and scattering over well-kept lawns. The first poem, My Poverty , also speaks of this season, as I grab onto the last bits of warmth, seeking the fading trees and flowers for inspiration to get through the cold season, when I feel impoverished without the blooming world of nature. The second poem, Wardrobe , is a reflection on the silent hours of winter, and the contemplation that naturally arises from stillness. In this contemplation I observe my need to write of things felt and seen, as well as the unseen, those things deep in my subconscious, which can rule the motions of my life, this poem attempts to reach into those places to understand myself better. ...

So much is written about embracing our bodies and our sensuality… Yet there is no denying the fact that too many of us succumb to the perceived negative reflection staring back at us in the mirror each day; that we succumb to the pressures of society and its view of what is right and what is wrong, what is beauty and what is not. Inspired by yet another piece of writing about one’s unhappiness with their not-so-perfect body—paired with revelations brought about by embracing the freedom found within clothing-optional resorts—I wanted to share my awakening with women still struggling with accepting their desirability and sense of self. Walking A Fine Line… by Maureen Lancaster Walking a fine line for a better cause because sometimes sharing what you’ve learned is worth risking yourself… can you take a conservatively-raised woman and submerse her into a culture of clothing-free freedom and see her begin to embrace her body and her sensuality fo...