the true love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

 

 

 

 

~ David Whyte

from  The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

listen here:  https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/david-whyte-the-truelove?utm

_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

 

 

flawed and fragile

 

 

 

 

 

We are able to forgive because we are able to recognize our shared humanity.

 We are able to recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable, flawed human beings

 capable of thoughtlessness and cruelty. We also recognize that no one is born evil

 and that we are all more than the worst thing we have done in our lives.

 

 A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty, cruelty, heartbreak,

 indifference, love, and so much more. We want to divide the good from the bad, 

the saints from the sinners, but we cannot. All of us share the core qualities 

of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous and sometimes selfish. 

Sometimes we are thoughtful and other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind

 and sometimes cruel. This is not a belief. This is a fact.

If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which the hurt happened.

 If we look at any perpetrator, we can discover a story that tells us something

 about what led up to that person causing harm. It doesn’t justify the person’s actions;

 it does provide some context. . . .

No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist. No one is born full of hatred.

 No one is born full of violence. No one is born in any less glory or goodness than you or I.

 But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful life experience,

 this glory and goodness can be forgotten, obscured, or lost. We can easily be hurt and broken, 

and it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the ones who have 

done the hurting and the breaking.

We are all members of the same human family. . . .

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives are inextricably linked, 

we can find empathy and compassion. In finding empathy and compassion, 

we are able to move in the direction of forgiving.

Ultimately, it is humble awareness of our own humanity that allows us to forgive:

We are, every one of us, so very flawed and so very fragile. I know that,

 were I born a member of the white ruling class at that time in South Africa’s past, 

I might easily have treated someone with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated. 

I know, given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable of the same monstrous acts

 as any other human on this achingly beautiful planet. It is this knowledge of my own frailty

 that helps me find my compassion, my empathy, my similarity,

 and my forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Desmond Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu

 from The Book of Forgiving: The Foufold Path for Healing 

Ourselves and Our World

art by Leigh Wells

 

 

 

 

our children, coming of age

In the great circle, dancing in

and out of time, you move now

toward your partners, answering

the music suddenly audible to you

that only carried you before

and will carry you again.

 

When you meet the destined ones

now dancing toward you,

out of your awareness for the time,

we whom you know, others we remember

whom you do not remember, others 

forgotten by us all.

 

When you meet, and hold love 

in your arms, regardless of all,

the unknown will dance away from you 

toward the horizon of light.

Our names will flutter

on these hills like little fires.

~ Wendell Berry

.

letting barriers disolve

 

 

 

 

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing,

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

between what belongs to you and others.

 

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

from The Season of the Soul

 

 

the way

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friend, this is the only way
to learn the secret way:

Ignore the paths of others,
even the saints' steep trails.

Don't follow.
Don't journey at all.

Rip the veil from your face.

 

 

 

 

 
~ Sachal Sarmast
English version by Ivan M. Granger