Friday, March 11, 2011

dangerous mountain

the climber reaches the peak in a day ~
but what are you doing here? it’s dangerous!
you pray to heaven for protection,
and the rock wall befor
e you opens like a cave.

being a solo flyer..a solitaire..
brings one..brings me..
face to face with aloneness..
a hole in the wall..
of course, why wouldn’t it?

as thomas merton wrote of his solitary life..
“now as i really confront it..
it is awesome, wonderful,
and i see i have no strength
of my own for it..”

this always happens to me
when i travel to the farthest most~
i see that i have no strength for it..
and yet, over and again..
i take the risk, the challenge..
reaching the peak in a day..
what am i doing here?


to live intentionally, to live deliberately~

for me, to strip away the masks and disguises
that come with the known life..
the friends and family..the street corners..
livelihoods and hoods,
shoppes, shopkeepers and habits of my life..
i want to see what shines through
when the veil is down..

at first, it is always fear and great doubt..
it’s dangerous!
partially due to jet lag..true..
then ~
the total nowness and newness
of a place and my place in it..
for i have no place..
i have not stacked up a pile
of faces, roles and co-spiriters
to settle in with..

there is an emptiness to me..
a minimum of inauthenticity..
innocence and ignorance..yet again..
discovering, uncovering, recovering..
the wellspring of trust ..
you pray to heaven for protection..

i know there is no place to go..
and i know that there is nothing like the unknown..
being thrown into it like chips in cookie dough
to bring out the heat, the sweet
of making things whole.

it’s been said..
we may think that we need to be more/have more
in order to be whole
yet really, we need to let go, throw away
everything that isn’t true, isn’t our essence..

i confess to a great un done ness..
a great hole in my wholeness..
these do come about more than once in our lives..
the great sea-changes of birth, old age, illness and death.
our own and others..
i see that there is always a hole in wholeness..
after all, it is spelled that way..
the practice, the key, the gift
is the ability to accept it..
the what is..hole..
our strength is in that inward measure of space..

kadhosh, kadhosh, kadhosh!
enough holiness...

taking oneself away, apart
where everything is stripped clean, cleared out
where habit, identity, grief are stuffed..
healing might thread together a fresh heart
and the rock wall will open like a cave..









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