A Northern Wind
Every second the question comes,
How long will you stay dregs?
Rise. Do not keep stirring the heavy sediment.
Let murkiness settle.
Some torches, even when they burn with spirit,
give off more smoke than light.
No matter how hard you stare into muddy water,
you will not see the moon or sun.
A northern wind arrives that burnishes grief
and opens the sky.
The soul wants to walk out in that cleansing air
and not come back.
The soul is a stranger trying to find a home,
somewhere that is not a where.
Why keep on grazing on why?
Good falcon soul,
you have flown around foraging long enough.
Swing back now toward the emperor’s whistling.
-Rumi
I have been staring into muddy water and I have not seen the
moon or sun.
I have tried to look past these days of treatment and have
failed to detect any signs of a future.
The sediment of my old life surrounds me – on the walls, in
vials of beads, in chests of drawers, paper-crawling across surfaces, stored in
Rubbermaid bins, in closets, in boxes, in labeled containers, in every room. Flotsam,
jetsam. I examine it constantly, hoping that purpose will emerge.
I have been looking for somewhere that is a “where.”
The left brain, newly relieved of it’s alien invader, wants
lists, goals, plans. It is not comfortable with being bald, stripped of its
constructed identities. It does not like this vulnerability at all. It wants a
compass. It must be useful. Things must add up.It demands to know who I think I am.
I pick up Rumi’s poem and as I read, suddenly I slip past my ravenous ego to nowhere at all, where there is nothing to fear - and so much air.
******
On rereading this, I understand it would be easy to misunderstand. When I say I have "failed to detect any signs of a future," I mean that I cannot see the shape of the future...what I will be doing once I'm past treatment. Apparently (and I understand this), some of you took it to mean that I had given up hope of living. Not yet! My apologies for being unclear. This blog actually describes a breakthrough and relief. Obviously I have to work on my writing.!
******
On rereading this, I understand it would be easy to misunderstand. When I say I have "failed to detect any signs of a future," I mean that I cannot see the shape of the future...what I will be doing once I'm past treatment. Apparently (and I understand this), some of you took it to mean that I had given up hope of living. Not yet! My apologies for being unclear. This blog actually describes a breakthrough and relief. Obviously I have to work on my writing.!
2 comments:
It's a good thing to let the future take care of itself. We never can see it anyway - and if we try to force it to bend to our wills, we may very well miss something that would have been even better. Don't look ahead. Look around. Look around with curiosity and a desire to see, to be aware, to experience. Not to understand. Just to see.
Breathe. It's all there, waiting.
I know what it feels like to not see past our trials and that it is not all bad just our spirit wandering and not yet finding a place to detect a future. Go with it!
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