We show up, burn brightly, live passionately and hold nothing back and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.
—Rolf Gates
This moment, too, is surrender, this blazing,
this bliss-ache, this bright-chime of being,
this showing up heartbare with no shred held back,
this feral unselving, this radiant loss
of all knowing, this wild unhiding
where anything can happen next,
this, too, is surrender. Not like the soulquaking
gut-fall of grief, only just like it, no foothold
except on the needle-tip point of what is,
that place where there is no story, no self,
no yes, no no, no safety, no promises, and
all is being, yes, this, too, is surrender,
this opening beyond self, this radiant obliteration,
unfathomed unfurling, trust-flaring, now-flaming,
instructionless grace, this ecstatic exploding
that always and never arrives.
*
Oh friends … Rumi said, “Be a fool,” and also suggested “be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no … crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute …” …
And so … happy April Fool’s. Perhaps not the fool where you try to trick people, more the fool where you are “surrendered to beauty.”