Description: Loving Kindness Meditation May all beings be happy, healthy and whole. May they have love, warmth and affection. May they be protected from harm, and free from fear. May they be alive, engaged and joyful. May all beings enjoy inner peace and ease. May that peace expand into their world and throughout the entire universe.
Description: The Raven Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.” Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore. (...) Edgar Allan Poe
Description: Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die. Mary Elizabeth Frye
Description: Hope Hope was but a timid friend; She sat without the grated den, Watching how my fate would tend, Even as selfish-hearted men. She was cruel in her fear; Through the bars one dreary day, I looked out to see her there, And she turned her face away! Like a false guard, false watch keeping, Still, in strife, she whispered peace; She would sing while I was weeping; If I listened, she would cease. False she was, and unrelenting; When my last joys strewed the ground, Even Sorrow saw, repenting, Those sad relics scattered round; Hope, whose whisper would have given Balm to all my frenzied pain, Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven, Went, and ne’er returned again! Emily Brontë
Description: The Swan This laboring through what is still undone, as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way, is like the awkward walking of the swan. And dying-to let go, no longer feel the solid ground we stand on every day- is like anxious letting himself fall into waters, which receive him gently and which, as though with reverence and joy, draw back past him in streams on either side; while, infinitely silent and aware, in his full majesty and ever more indifferent, he condescends to glide. Rainer Maria Rilke