Cross-Training Body Mind Emotions Spirit | Rachael R. Resch

This is one of my favorite poems to say, to hear, to feel the echo of spiraling through the past and the future and the present.  We heard it at the end of the Nia New Year’s class this morning.

I Live My Life

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never acheive the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, 
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.

— Rainer Maria Rilke / 1899

from Book for the Hours of Prayer
translated by Robert Bly

Here’s the poem I read on New Year’s Day 2009, inspired by the beautiful song created by Garry Schyman for the video, Where The Hell Is Matt?

Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

— Rabindranath Tagore / 1913
from Gitaljali
translated by Rabindranath Tagore

On this day, that we call the last day of the year, I bow to the Holy that makes life live by spiraling and sprouting up through each one of us, grasses, muscles, milk, stars, air and deep water fish, day in and day out, year in and year out, breath in and breath out, ending again and beginning again and always in motion, dancing the worlds into being and spiraling and sprouting from and to a time beyond our own.

Happy New Year, my dearest friends.