Poems by La Verne Shelton
LaVerne Maria Shelton (a.k.a. LVM) passed away on February 15, 2025. She was a longtime member of the Madison Friends Meeting. She was a talented musician, poet, and deeply involved with the community. She was a member and/or sojourned with many Friends Meetings (Haverford, Princeton, Charleston, Madison, and Greene Street, Philadelphia) before transferring her membership to the Plainfield Friends Meeting in Vermont, served as Friend in Residence at Pendle Hill, and continued to serve in leadership roles within national and regional Quaker organizations.
These poems were read at the Spring 2025 Interim session and we are sharing them here for others.
Someone’s Praying, Lord!
How can I be at Peace?
Someone’s in need, Lord!
How can I be at Rest?
War covers our planet
As we meet in strife with one another
And fight for the greenest lawn
Ant the sweetest dessert
And the chocolate highest in coca.
How can I be at peace?
When there is little justice in this world,
WhenI use much more than my share
Of diminishing resources
And still
Complain about the price of gasoline,
When there is abundance for a few
And starvation and slavery for many,
And I have more and more,
While my sister has less and less,
How can I be at peace?
When righteousness means efficiency,
The efficiency of making a coat for my back that costs less
Because twenty people have no medical care—
None at all;
When a joke about using surplus people as substitute fuel
After the oil runs out
Is taken as a possible solution for production
By those who own the diminishing oil resource,
How can I be at peace?
I want an end to war between nations
But, is that peace?
When anyone cries or prays for food for their child,
What’s the difference,
If there are no megaton bombs being dropped?
There is no peace until everyone is fed,
Until no one is enslaved
For the gain of another.
How can I live in peace?
While a child dies pointlessly every minute
For want of basic necessities
And so many people lose themselves
In wrath and ignorance;
While the manipulation of greed by mass media
Is so effective,
How can I be at peace?
War is no way to peace
But placation and contentment
And cheap substitutes for oil
Are not the way either.
Peace is simple:
Love your neighbor
Then the two of you can figure out what to do
As Holy Spirit guides you.
But peace is a task for a lifetime:
To care for every neighbor,
With attention to the divine spark
That resides in even the most intentional of evil doers,
And with no expectation of gaining something from someone,
Even honor or nobility;
To love all neighbors—
Without exception:
That is our toll and our reward;
And, that is the core of peace.
La Verne Shelton
July 19, 2007
Breath
Breath centers;
Breath opens loci of energy;
Breath connects inside places;
Breath opens every pore,
So that breath rides each vessel and extremity.
Breath of spirit connects
Me
To thee
In worship-
And to the thought, the image
Of praise and adoration making life whole,
Through what we have in common.
Spirit breathes the sap through those trees out the window,
And breathes love through the nerves of that large, black bird,
Which flaps its wings, soars above my head, and calls out,
“What news, what news?”
“Hear me,” Great Spirit sighs, listening lovingly,
Breathing me as I breathe spirit.
Someone speaks, settling thought into
This gently, surging sea of wind.
In such a sea, there can be no deception-
As my breath-thy breath-Spirit breath
All participate in commune-ication—
Even where tongue and lips pronounce
No word at all.
Listen,
Listen,
Listen with lungs and throat—
With fingertips,
With heart wide open.
Pulsing and throbbing within and without,
Divine union in the space of breath
Creates Light.
No one speaks,
As Breath-Made-of-Light flutters
Over heads,
Across the floor, through the window.
Wings, briefly silenced by the speaking, beat once more,
And I fly to thee on these wings.
We fly together without impediment between us;
We are warm, pulsing, breathing, loving,
Desiring nothing, complete and whole.
…A mote drops to the floor
And circles of resonance spread throughout the room.
Someone touches my hand, which is-
My hand again, my own.
I sigh
-Suddenly in the throes of desire again
Because I do not want this wholeness to be over.
Before I leave this multitude-in-oneness
To be one among the multitude,
I give thanks for the Good Order received,
Providing Direction throughout the day.
I shout praise in silence,
For spirit that makes life possible,
And for a life lived in gratitude for the timelessness of
One voice,
One heart,
One breath.
La Verne Shelton
Spring 2007
I am not my individual self;
The community is all of me;
No characteristic without reflection,
No being without meaning,
No meaning without Living Truth;
No Truth in the absence of Universal Love.
The Divine is in-Community
Help given, help received,
Holding common Love,
Through worship, work,
Tears, and Laughter;
Through Listening and
Common Breath,
We hold each other in the Light,
Each to become our individual selves
In all fullness,
As we co-create Truth Transcendent.
La Verne Shelton
September 2007
Renewing
Resurfacing
Rebirthing—
Has this Respite given a sense of
Refurbishing?
These “Re” words are legion—
Even the birds rr-ing as they
RRRe-TRRE-Ye the morning
This morning’s sighting of nodding daffodils
Recalled a Massachusetts Zazen of two springs past,
When dewy field draped in fragrant, yellow-white daffodils,
As Yellow as at the dawn of space-time,
Nodded in chorus with my breathing
And worshipped glad morning with me.
Reassembled in my heart today is a lesson of presence,
Rejuvenating in each Relearning,
As details mutate with new joys and trials,
And fresh encumbrances:
Be Responsive to the Now
And Rejoin conversation with the divine!
During all daily occupations,
When I vacate my guiding spirit,
Divine reminds me by a tight chest—
Whether its root be center isolated from source
Or lungs reeling from smog
Or heart recoiling from abundance or neediness
In another vessel of divine love temporarily entrusted to my
Attention and care.
Then, divine guidance suggests a brief encounter with a nearby lake:
A moment, amid the hubbub, of silent expanse of water,
As I and thou, the other ailing vessel, find the next step together.
Sacred Water!
Whether it be in winter suspension, shouting Midwest spring,
Twirling autumn, or spit-roasted summer heat,
Let us return to that
Fount, that source.
And even though that lakewise revitalization
Take place only in the imagination of our hearts—
May we seekers find Renewal in our moment of need
And then, come again,
Refreshed,
Rejoicing,
To the task given to us.
Community, too, needs oftentimes to halt
Its relentless becoming,
To Regroup, Retool, Remember,
And to hold in prayer
Those of us who have left this place or this life,
Or those of us aching to relinquish some suffering,
In that pause,
Let us sing the reprise of sacred community’s mission—
To enable each of us to grow
Into the scattering of our God-given gifts
In furtherance of our mutual transformation:
We weave loving, mundane space-time-possibility.
This day near sojourn’s end,
Reformed by morning drizzle,
With sun glowing lightly and lovingly
Behind the clouds and mist,
Breath flows freely
In Respite from pain and tightness,
In Pendle Hill’s cool spring—
So lengthy, it seems eternal.
But now, LET GO!
Release fear and
Return to labor springing first from
Hope and Love.
God’s task for thee is not yet complete.
Let each day breathe
Resplendent air
Of whatever composition,
And, turning forward, Return breath of God to works,
After attentive combustion within.
Go forth.
Renew.
La Verne Shelton
April 19-20, 2007
