shed your skins,
their undersides
are covered with art
you have been making
in the dark,
your own lascaux
how deep
will you dare to go ¿
— march 2, 2007
discovering lascaux
Tag: rebirth
when were you born ¿
filling out a form,
i was asked
when were you born ?
there was no room to answer,
i was born a thousand times
yesterday alone,
i am being born right now,
do you not see the blood
do you not feel the contractions
can you not hear
the endless mother-cry
of healed and broken joy
— december 20, 2007
Conscious Closure (Vanessa Reid)
In this TEDx talk of unusual scope and beauty (Toronto, May 2015) Vanessa Reid, a pioneering social innovator, explores the wildness and creativity in life that are possible only in the embrace of the full cycle of existence — which includes dying. Our organizations, our parents, ourselves — all of us are on a journey that has an end, and the ability to “kiss the joy as it flies” has much to do with our capacity for conscious closure.
In a Dark Time
(by Theodore Roethke)
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood —
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks — is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is —
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
busy being born
i’m sorry i didn’t answer your message
i was busy being born
the trouble is
it happens every day —
how do i live, when
being born
keeps getting in the way ¿
— March 28, 2006
For a New Beginning
(by John O’Donohue)
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.