Dancing through Fire: Daily Poems of Wisdom, Passion, and Peace is an invitation to deepen one’s passion and peace through daily poetry. The reader can feel the sensuousness of each poem: how the words appear in the mind’s eye, how they touch the skin of life, how they stir the spirit’s heart.
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I have always loved rainbows—
their awe-inspiring beauty,
Can it be, the Divine comes to walk with us
on the road of our doubts,
our pain, our brokenness?
With deep understanding of the human spirit, each poem by Tina Datsko de Sánchez touches the reader’s core with its rich imagery and holy metaphors.
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We know now he gave us this meal
to nourish our endurance,
Dina Datsko de Sánchez wrote this new poem for the re-imagined Homecoming Sunday at First Congregational Church, Long Beach.
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Son. Father. Uncle. Friend. Human being. Child of God. What blindness could keep anyone from seeing the sacred life in this man? Bystanders saw it. And cried out that his precious life be spared. Only …
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We tune our hearing to silence.
We wait on the source of being.
Our minds release the roar of thoughts.
Mother Earth weeps for her children—
day after day, rain drumming down.
She cleanses herself and cleanses us—
Even during this global pandemic,
a walk around the block
yields moments of healing and beauty.
We tune our hearing to silence.
We wait on the source of being.
Our minds release the roar of thoughts.
Beautifully exploring the theme that ‘only those who see the invisible can do the impossible,’ this exciting, lucid, and often heartbreaking collection of poems tracks the life and consciousness of the great Liberator Simon Bolivar.
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Lo Divino nos está llamando
The Divine is calling us
para liberar a los cautivos,
to bring release to the captives,
To the Hawaiians, Aloha means “God in us.”
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For forty days and forty nights
you wander in the wilderness
and face temptation
of body, heart, mind and spirit.
For Mary Ellen Kilsby
Before the morning star, I bore the Word from the womb
What shall we bring to community?
A loaf, a fish, a voice for singing,
hands for baking, a heart for teaching,
wisdom for guiding our children and youth?
Standing in gratitude, living in joy,
we reach beyond old wounds and pain.
The waters have parted,
and we have crossed over to new life,
leaving our fears on the distant shore.
In this hectic season help us to remember,
even the simplest actions count.
Let us pause and take a breath
to feel the miracle
of air filling and emptying within,
as though God is breathing into us.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky, How Jesus our Rabbi did teach that we try To love one another, no you and no I… I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
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Radical love stops a stranger on the street
and invites her to God’s eternal banquet.
Radical love stays up all night,
plotting ways to make you laugh.
The earth turns, seasons turn,
and we turn homeward, seeking
a place we’ve never been.
And to those who say God’s work can only be done
by following certain rules, the rabbi says,
What if the compassion you show to your pets,
even the care you give to your cars, were given also
to your sisters and brothers on earth?
The Christmas poem, “Immanuel: God Within and Among Us” was written for the Centennial Christmas Cantata to celebrate the centennial of First Congregational Church of Long Beach’s historic building. Below is a the video of the performance.
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Coming home to community, we come home to our better selves.Coming together as community, we can live as our better selves.
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Together we remember, we commemorate,
the lives that were taken,
the souls that were taken.
They did not evaporate into air.
They are with us
still in the choice we make to remember,
to hold up with love and honor
those who died in two great glass towers,
who represented the world and its connections,
those who died at the Pentagon,
those who died on Flight 93
in sacrifice that others might live.
God grieves with us our every loss—
the murder of a dear friend,
the death of a beloved parent,
a blossoming young life cut short.
A gun took me from you,
but not only a gun.
Behind the gun burned hatred born of fear.
Bullets took them from us,
but not only bullets.
Behind the bullets the smallness
of fear-hate aspired to grandiosity.
