Highlights from Winter Weekthun Celebration by Michelle Welch

Calligraphy by Stuart Rice
Characters for Man and Life in different styles. The themes for this year’s weekthun were “It’s a Wonderful Life” and joining heaven and earth.

It’s a Wonderful Life, by Teresa Gregersen

Chorus:
Great Eastern Sun is arisin’
Great Eastern Sun is shinin’
Woh oh oh
Great Eastern Sun is alive in
All of us

Verse 1:
Life may sometimes get us down
But we won’t be fooled by a frown
Clouds roll in but they don’t stay
Because we are warriors that do not stray

Chorus

Verse 2:
Sitting alone my thoughts come and go
The present moment is a no show
Fears arise and we wanna run away
But we are warriors that do not stray

Chorus

Verse 3:
Tiger Lion Garuda Dragon
Clear the fog and bring the wagon
It’s a wonderful life I declare and say
Love and joy are here to stay

Chorus

Poems by Michelle Welch

Cars

The cars are perfect:
Maddening, unwelcome noise,
ferrying our thoughts around
One here – slow and buzzing and bored
Another – big and rumbling and hungry
That one – angry-fast running racing speeding wouldn’t stop unless it crashed and spewed smoke all over the wreckage

But they keep going
(rarely so dramatic as that)
gone as fast as they came,
and if we stop listening –
distracted for just a moment –
we find a new one,
not knowing where it came from,
wondering where the last one went,
driving off,
forgetting about us.

(After Shastri Ramos’s talk on compassionate abiding.)

I am a child.
I don’t want to be a child –
I want to be tall and strong and powerful,
not crying, frightened,
jumping at shadows,
full of sniffles and imaginary hurts and flash-paper anger.

I close the door on the child,
wonder how many chores will convince it
to grow up,
how many toys I have to take away,
but it doesn’t work.
All I can do is open the door,
take the child
– runny nosed, gap toothed, teary eyed –
to the window,
and throw open the curtains
so we can smile at the sun.