-- THE ONE THING NEEDFUL –

John Herlihy

At times, a gaping, cavernous hole,

Announcing itself there in the mind.

As shadows lengthen across the soul.

Tiptoeing through our lives as if blind.

Then we hear the wind as a whisper,

Our breath utters a consoling word.

Divine remembrance enters us as a river,

Invoking calming rhythms felt and heard.

Why is it always so difficult to remember,

The one thing needful, the one thing true ?

Why do we feel as ashes of a spent ember,

When all around us untold blessings accrue?

We trust the interaction of night and day,

When dawn appears, dusk is not far behind.

Yet sweet remembrance as feathers weigh,

As worries and uncertainty burden the mind.

Uncertainties, doubts, trust by the wayside,

We forget the sober rhythms that in us flow.

The values we live by, the truths we abide,

The humanity that allows us innerly to grow.

The one thing needful, what is it – a mystery.

Ask anyone and they will readily tell you so.

We live in a world, but do we live in reality.

We live as if the reality we never truly know.

Life often confronts us with facts out of reach.

Sorrows and miseries we wish never to happen.

Only then forced our beloved God to beseech,

Reality turns all too real when our hearts sadden.

The crack that releases the essence of the egg,

The light that emerges thru the crack in a door.

The husk of the nut cracked, on the kernel fed,

The squirrel finds sustenance on earth’s floor.

We be conscious beings, yet we think too much,

Filling the mind with trivia, when it needs be empty.

We are self-aware, yet the mind can be a crutch,

Forgetting the Higher Self as a source of plenty.

As the day grows dim, let us endeavor to reflect,

Upon the one thing needful, vital to remember.

Let us not succumb to temptations of neglect,

In remembering, we too will be remembered.

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Monday 11 July 2022