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Posts Tagged ‘permission’

The Trap

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 25, 2026| 8 Comments »


for Coleman Barks (April 23, 1937-Feb. 23, 2026)
 
 
It took me six months
to get Coleman Barks
to grant me permission
to use his translations of Rumi.
Six months of fretting.
Six months of worry.
Six months of feeling unworthy.
One day my friend asked
what was taking so long.
I told her, I hadn’t yet summoned
the courage to ask him.
In five minutes, she’d found me
his email. That night I wrote him.
The next day, he responded.
Of course. Please use them.
Fear is a trap. It uses self-doubt
as bait. But sometimes
generosity breaks the steel wire.
The trap never works as well again.
Years later, I remember his kindness
and the clarity of my friend.
How quickly joy can find legs.
Joy is the mouse that sees the trap
and knows there are better
places to find nourishment.
Joy is the mouse that sees the trap
and walks the other way.
 

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On International Women’s Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 8, 2023| 8 Comments »

for Elizabeth Plamondon Cutler


There is no evidence, says Quora,
that permissioning is a real word.
But last weekend, when a real woman
used permissioning as a real word
to talk about a real practice
of supporting other women
to be their most magnificent selves,
I felt my whole body tingle
with the realness of it.
Permissioning.
I had not known how deeply
I wanted this word,
especially the way she said it
as if it were commonplace,
a word as pedestrian
as gift or yes or powerful or true,
the kind of word you could toss out
on a ski trail as if it were as obvious
as snow in winter,
as clear as a Colorado sky,
that we are here to permission each other
to be influential, to be honest,
to be real as trees, real as change,
real as our dreams, our hands,
our fears, real as the words we dare
to speak with our very real voices.

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