YOU ARE AMAZING

I say a Baha’I prayer for healing regularly and I keep in mind that spiritual healing is more critical than the physical. To let go of all the garbage, the lead weight of old wounds. This what I mean when I ask you to pray for me a good death.

And you’re making me cry.I mean the letters and calls from people I dearly love and also the letters that begin with something like, “I don’t really know you but I read your blog,” and “I hope it’s not inappropriate to write.” Often those second kind of letters are from people who have lost loved ones to cancer or are facing terminal illness in their families – and they are heart-wrenching and beautiful. You make me cry and I'm grateful. You are all an answer to my prayer for healing - the water that washes out the dross.

Today, I got letters from two people I love. And yep, crying again. One of these dear ones sent me a poem I wrote for her a number of years back. She is much younger than me and she was trying to live with her larger-than-life personality. Too much joy, too much passion, too much pain. The world loves us to be bigger than life – but there is secret part too – and the world also loves to say, “Shhhh. Who do you think you are?”

This is the poem. It applies to a handful of people I know intimately, people the world can barely contain – friends or lovers or both. I think it still works for a lot of us.

Protocols for Crazy

Take warning or hope
that the changes never stop
and yes
the price of our own power
is making friends with pain
and sometimes
having only the sky
to share joy with.

Sometimes it's empty arms
and tired hearts
but we make room
for more
and it always comes
in colors
radiant with love.

So stack the masks one by one
under the stairs
and go naked in the world
and it will call you "crazy"
or in a kinder mood
"brave."

It's all the same word
the same dream of being there
undressed in public
without a foothold
balanced on your own dreams.

Be prepared to drink the stars
and then
try to keep them
from shining from your eyes.

The dream of the world whispers:

Keep it quiet, keep it down.
The light makes you crazy.