How
to Live Your Poem
“Cultivate
a secret life. Discover the fuel that feeds you. Eat peaches. Take the road not
taken. Change your life. You do not have to be good. When the time comes to let
it go, let it go. Reinvent. Identify what stays with you latest and deepest. Remember
that disobedience is the first right of being alive…”
Lines
from a variety of poems by various poets.
My
friend, Ladonna, read this list at dinner the other night. The lines are from
folks like Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Frost, Rainer Maria Rilke, and
others. This is not even half of the full list, and you could add more. The
final line in this grouping is, “Know of nothing else but miracles.” I
like that.
I don’t
know about you, but I need poetry in the final days leading up to the election
in America. We have been through such chaos and are still in the throes of a
terrible pandemic. Everyone I know is absolutely exhausted and there is nothing
more to say about any of it. We simply must hunker down and wait until the
storm passes.
The only healing medicine
for this moment is prayer and poetry. This is when positive thoughts and affirmations
apply. Here is a short prayer from Marianne Williamson’s book Illuminated
Prayers: “With every moment’s flight, may something beautiful be revealed to
me, and become a part of who I am.” And here is a fragment of “Love” by
Czeslaw Milosz: “Love means to look at yourself/the way one looks at distant
things/for you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees this way heals
his heart/without knowing it, from various ills—A bird and a tree say to him:
Friend”
Focus
on the beauty around you, and on the understanding that your rising above the
fray is essential to the health of the whole. As Carl Jung said, “The world
today hangs by a thread, and that thread is the individual consciousness.” Perhaps
we are only one among many, but each of us is an important element in moving
human consciousness forward in a positive way. Find something you love today
and give it your attention.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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