Sobriety is Like a Mother
 

Sobriety is Like a Mother

Giving Birth to Clarity, Purpose and Hope

 An Event Like No Other

An Opportunity to Reinvent

 A Time of Creating

With Hard Labor Comes the Unfolding

 A Never-Ending Process

Nurturing and Developing

 From the Pain Can Come Gain

 A Time to Discover and a Time to Recover

 A Time to Mother...

 Clarity, Purpose and Hope

 From Sobriety Comes Growth

A Process Like No Other

 Shirley
 

Growth is a paradox
And paradoxes, by definition
Cannot be reduced to mere building blocks Ñ
To spiritual elementals.

The belief in spiritual building blocks
Implies a belief in spiritual bootstrapping
And brackets the transcendental Ñ
The outside breaking in.

I can, yet not I Ñ
The paradox of paradoxes!
And that itself is a paradox,
The building block
For that which has no building blocks.

I will immerse my soul
In rivers of the spirit
Where still waters run deep
And deep waters run strong.

Sometimes strong, deep waters
Can break loose spiritual sticking points
Where flotsam that still has roots
Can latch tight
To submersed boulders of unreconciled memory
And cling tight for dear life Ñ
An old, dying life they do not want to lose.

Roots of pain
And boulders of memory
Become logjams
Damming and dyking the spiritual flow
Where deep waters run turbulent.

But sometimes violent, jarring movements
Break the dead wood of the past
And still waters float high,
Rising to the surface And providing the serenity for new growth.

The angry flood, the raging tide,
Seeks release
To control and balance Where deep waters run both strong and still.

Steve Snyder

Self-examination
Is a vital point
To a vital life.

I can choose to grow not;
I can choose to stagnate;
I can choose to ignore spiritual invitations.
But I am given many opportunities
To choose to look within
Before or after I point without.

My inventory, my daily reflection,
Is mine.
I donÕt have to berate myself
Or listen to old, condemnatory voices,
Father Gods in my head.

My inventory.
My growth. My willingness. My perception of
What life has to offer.
And my belief
That I am deserving.

My mistakes. My insights. My solutions.
Listening to inward promptings
And outward advice.
Open to both, wise to both,
Learning from both.

How much do I truly desire
And deeply yearn for
A new life
With no strings or preconditions attached?

How much desire do I really have
For transformation?

How much openness do I have
For growing on a daily basis?

The unexamined self
Is a self not really living.

Steve Snyder

I Know Why 
The Caged Bird Sings

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.  
 

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.  

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.  

By M aya Angelou

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
 Available from Random House  

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams you master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all you winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings --nor loose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son !

by Rudyard Kipling

Still I Rise  
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard. 

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

By M aya Angelou