Cool rain is falling through sunshine today
and the canyon’s red walls are radiant
with the contradiction. The world
smells of dry earth mixing with sky,
a rich and generative perfume
that weaves into all that grows.
Witnessing the beauty of this day,
equal parts clear and stormy,
this is how a person might come to trust
the acute aliveness we feel
when we dance with both sorrow
and gladness at the same time,
one partner asking us to crawl, to bow,
the other bidding us raise our arms
to twirl in joyful abandon. In the distance,
thunder. In the foreground, the swallows
are ceaseless in their swirling.
They do not try to avoid the raindrops
nor do they shun the sun.
On the inside, a feeling loops and dives,
swoops and circles back. It says,
This life is not easy. What a gift to be alive.
Posts Tagged ‘wholeness’
A Surprising Wholeness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, dance, paradox, rain, sun, swallows, wholeness on August 12, 2026| 10 Comments »
Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged exile, grace, parts of self, walls, wholeness on November 27, 2024| 20 Comments »
I’m sorry. I thought banishing you was the way to become better, more perfect, more good, more free. The irony: I thought if I cut you off and cast you out, if I built the walls high enough, then the parts left would be more whole. As if the sweet orange doesn’t need the toughened rind, the bitter seed. As if the forest doesn’t need the blue fury of fire. It didn’t work, did it, the exile? You were always here, jangling the hinges, banging at the door, whispering through the cracks. Left to myself, I wouldn’t have known to take down the walls, nor would I have had the strength to do so. That act was grace disguised as disaster. But now that the walls are rubble, it is also grace that teaches me to want to embrace you, grace that guides me to be gentle, even with the part of me that would still try to exile any other part. It is grace that invites me to name all parts beloved. How honest it all is. How human. I promise to keep learning how to know you as my own, to practice opening to what at first feels unwanted, meet it with understanding, trust all belongs, welcome you home. |
Healing the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, sadness, wholeness on March 14, 2023| 3 Comments »
Perhaps I once thought I knew
what it meant to heal—to be good as new,
to be stitched back together, unbruised,
unblemished, in no pain, repaired.
But what is healing to the heart
when it has lost a beloved?
Surely not to forget the loss happened
the way the lungs forget bronchitis.
Surely not to stop the ache
the way bones reknit and forget
the break. Surely not to shun sadness,
when sadness is the only thing
that makes sense.
Is it strange that deeply broken
is the only way now I feel whole?
On a Thursday Afternoon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, love, moment, mother, photo, surrender, wholeness on January 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
We sit on the carpet in the entry,
and Vivian balances her ring
on the head of the cat and
for a long time we stay like this,
speaking of school and friends
The phone doesn’t ring.
The texts don’t chime.
The afternoon light
seems to hold each thing in its place
like photo corners in a scrapbook
and minutes stretch into forever.
There is a wholeness to the moment
so perfect I almost try to escape it.
Instead I stay and fall deeper
into the pages of this simple story.
A girl. A mother. A cat. An afternoon.
The certainty there’s nowhere else to be.
Here to Be Swallowed Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, mushroom, thriving, wholeness on September 2, 2022| 4 Comments »
Part of me thrills to walk in the woods
and find dozens of old king boletes,
their cinnamon caps stretched and blotched,
the yellow sponge of their underbellies
bloated with rain and dappled with dross,
their stems turned to lace by maggots.
There was a time I felt responsible
for gathering them all to eat them, to dry them,
to share them, lest they go to waste.
As if I could ever gather them all.
As if to bloom and thrive
and return to the earth is a waste.
The mushrooms teach me something
of what it is to show up, to give it all
for the sake of giving it all.
I feel so lucky now to find their dark puddles
as they deliquesce.
Soon, there will be no evidence
they were here at all. I leave the woods
no less broken, more whole.
Mirror
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cracks, poem, poetry, wholeness on July 29, 2016| 1 Comment »
Between the cracks of the sidewalk catches
the brown and white detritus of cottonwood.
How useless it looks, the fluff now ratty,
the stems bent and broken. No one takes notice
of it, no one stops to take their pictures
with the waste of seeds that will never make trees.
All the cracks of the world, how they gather
the unwanted, hold with no judgment,
make a home for what is lowly, what drifts.
The cracks, how they keep things whole.
Accidental Baptism
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, parenting, poem, poetry, son, wholeness on September 23, 2015| 1 Comment »
“Mom,” he says, “come quick.”
He pulls me out on the porch
to stare at the three-quarters moon.
“Mom, don’t you think
it looks purple?”
He says it with such urgency,
such thrill. I can make out
the violet edge and hum
in agreement. For a minute,
we hold each other and stand
in marvelous attention.
The night grass is lit,
a touch of purple in it,
even the dirty socks on the lawn
seem rinsed with light.
There is a wholeness I sometimes
doubt. It’s easier to see
what is broken. But whatever
it is that is whole tonight
has always been whole.
I fall into it like an ocean.
Happily Ever After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, self worth, vision, wholeness on November 21, 2014| 4 Comments »
Your eyes. I used to believe they created me.
One look from you, and I became chalice,
lotus, lioness, crane. Woman. Without your gaze,
I was unformed clay. Your absence, my absence.
It was like some strange twist on what Ptolemy said—
he believed that rays emanate from the eyes,
rays that traverse the air and find the object, allowing
it to be seen. If a woman dances alone in a room,
and you do not see her, is she really dancing?
Does she exist at all?
But Ptolemy was wrong, love, and so was I.
And this is not really the story of photoreceptors
and environmental stimuli. It’s the story
of how we long to be seen—it begins with such
innocence, a longing to please. It’s the story
of how eventually a woman might find herself
dancing for the leaping, whirling pleasure of dancing.
Oh Saint Francis, Perhaps I Am Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, key, poem, poetry, self inquiry, wholeness on November 11, 2013| 3 Comments »
When I feel lonely, my first thought is that you hold the key to my loneliness. … In the end, seeking only brings us to the edge of knowing ourselves.
—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, November 10
Here it is not,
the key I was looking for,
here where I knocked
on beautiful doors,
and ornate doors, and grand
doors, and ancient doors, and
safe doors, and hidden
doors and doors of November.
But here it is,
so close I could hardly
step without walking into it,
this door that has
no lock, no key,
this door
with my own name
on it.
Trying to Put Humpty Together Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, humpty dumpty, poem, poetry, wholeness on October 16, 2013| 3 Comments »
He cracks himself up. –Julie Cummings
Glue, of course.
Super and Elmer’s
and rubber cement.
Rubber bands.
Scotch tape.
Chicken wire.
String.
A full body cast.
A balancing act.
Affirmations
and hypnotizing.
They told him stories
of how whole he was.
Then offered
St. John’s Wort.
Sublingual B-12.
Calcium citrate
with Vitamin D.
Weeks of physical
therapy. Until
in the end,
Humpty laughed
at them all
and said,
“What a gift
it is to fall.
I love being broken,
it lets in
the light.
See this gold?”
He said,
and then gave it
away.