And if I find I’d rather not meet the truth,
then I can notice the little girl in me,
the one who hides in the closet
when she is afraid, the one who plays dead,
the one who ends all her stories with happily
ever after, and I can choose to love her.
I don’t need to drag her out or force her to look
or tell her that sometimes the villain wins in the end.
Instead, I can remind the rest of me how alive I feel
when I meet it all, when I choose to enter the day
eyes open, ears open, hands open
and let the world in. That is how,
on this day when I know the truth
of how cruel we humans can be,
I can lean into that pain at the same time
I watch the sky turn pink behind the white aspen
and feel the cold air kiss my cheeks,
my breath rising in visible prayer
meeting difficult truths I walk right through.
Posts Tagged ‘choices’
Choosing Truth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, survival, truth on January 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
Until We’re All Away from the Edge
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black lives matter, choices, community, human nature, kindness, news on June 6, 2020| 5 Comments »
for J Unterberg
In the picture on the news,
the little black girl holds a sign
that says, I’m your next president.
And in the grocery store,
the clerk smiles at me from behind her mask
and compliments my dress.
Consumed as I’ve been
with a sorrow so great
it swallowed our country whole,
I had thought it would take an energy
equally great and opposite
to pull me away from the bleak edge.
But then a stranger walked up to my car
where I was parked on the side of the road
to make sure I was okay. And just like that
I felt myself backing away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit.
It can be so small, what reminds us
who we are—a people who want
to thrive, to live in peace,
a people who are kind to each other
not because we have earned it, but
because kindness is in our nature.
I want to vote for that little girl,
want to help create the just world she rises in.
I want to help someone else
back away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit, another bit.
When Making a Choice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, direction, path on February 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »
It’s like any new landscape. At first,
You don’t know which direction to look.
Each time you look east, you regret
you can’t at the same time look west.
Soon you become a spinning top, unable
to focus anywhere without wanting to turn
and see what you’re missing. For a time,
it serves you, this willingness to see every side,
keeps you from making poor choices. But then,
spinning and spinning becomes dizzying.
What would it be like, you wonder,
to make a clear choice and then walk
that direction and never look back?
And so you try it—at first by forcing yourself
to look only one way. It’s not easy to walk
a straight line when you’ve been spinning.
Then you begin to notice how good it feels
to put one foot in front of the other
and walk a single course. It is, after all,
all a single person can do. How easy, now
that you’re not always looking away,
how easy to notice every detail about this landscape,
to revel in each step, to focus being
here, and now here, and only here.
Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, poem, poetry, presence, tree, wind on January 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The day dares me to become a tree,
dares me to root, to stay in one place,
to choose this here, to plant myself in this now,
to stretch down even as I reach up.
But there are gusts in me, and wild squalls,
whirling impulses that swirl and spin
and whisper to me to be current, be flow.
Winds in me that says go, darling, go.
And the day says stay to me. The day
says, find evergreen in the moment.
The day offers me its ground, its generous soil.
Opportunity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, kindess, opportunity, poem, poetry, wayne muller on September 4, 2018| 3 Comments »
To live a day, to care for a single day, is to shape a life. Each day is an opportunity to choose where to place our care. What shall we do today? What simple acts of remembrance will we use to punctuate our time and enrich our walk upon the earth this single day?
—Wayne Muller, How, Then, Shall We Live?
How many kindnesses did I miss today?
How many chances to help another
did I walk past, my eyes somehow fixed
already around the corner? How much beauty
went unnoticed? How much joy left
unspent? I am like the hiker at the foot
of the mountain who wanders in the fog,
not noticing the fog circles only the base. If I chose
to climb just a little, I’d see how red cliffs reflect
afternoon sun, see how new snow
catches in the trees and makes of each limb
a masterpiece. How is it I am not in
a constant state of wonder? Even
the fog gathers the pink of morning,
makes a practice of softening each
surface it touches. So simple,
the art of choosing to pay attention,
a sidewalk not so different in this regard
from a mountain. Every face a chance
to fall in love. Every human story
an opportunity to listen, to place our care.
Morning Stroll
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, poem, poetry, risk, safety on May 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »
When you walk along a cliff
and look over the edge,
a bit of the cliff will find its way
into your thoughts
and there, that place where
you were feeling quite safe
just a moment ago, now feels
charged with exposure.
Just today, a cliff said to me
that if I only would jump
then perhaps I would find my wings,
or perhaps then a tender angel
would deliver me—
you will never know,
said the cliff, if you keep walking
in that same direction you always walk—
What the Feet Said to the Eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, poem, poetry on January 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
And So Live
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84, brian swimme, choices, transmutation on October 25, 2011| 2 Comments »
at the splitting of paths
there is no sign
transform
or die
tough choice
till we realize
we must do both
*This is the first in a series of 84-character poems about transmutation, Brian Swimme’s seventh power of the universe. In EnlightenNext, he writes, “This is the way in which the universe sometimes insists that something new come forth. … When Earth finally emerged and brought forth bacteria, why didn’t the universe just call it a day? Isn’t it enough that tiny pieces of Earth jump with life? Apparently not. Our universe is a self-transcending community of beings, and transcendence is often a necessity.”