But we can try.
We can care.
We can choose to connect.
It can be better if we let it.
~ Seth Godin
Many of my days are spent bearing witness to the clarity secure within our souls as our personalities fling destructive BS into our lives. One recent conversation went something like this:
“You never invite me to Christmas.”
“I don’t even have Christmas.”
“I am never included.”
“You are the one who moved away.”
Pain, upon pain.
I claim again the gift of knowing that under any message filled with blame and accusation is a legitimate need even if it is being expressed unskillfully.
What a relief….
I love poetry. Something about the way a person shows you a feeling without saying what that feeling is excites the part of you that thrives on curiosity. Too much of the time our logical mind tries to run the show. We plan. We manipulate. We hide.
In a poem the words are expressions of the heart, being heard by the heart.
I had not intended the following poem to give away so much of my own heart, but it does.
The prompt is from The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward. Instructions were to choose an odd job. One example was snake milker’s daughter. We were to jot down some relevant language, choosing words that are specific to this job and sound great.
Medium Mayhem
Secrets slip into my awareness unheeded
-
from somewhere or someone
Listening hands hear, “Bell’s Palsy.”
Babies believed long dead
- babble difficult directives
“Tell her I am not dead.”
Fifty years she has carried abortion’s guilt
- Searing pain shoots down my leg
Relevant to ask, “Is this mine?”
The task is always to realize
- we are energy
swimming in one sea
Hearing, seeing, feeling, knowing
- not always easy to distinguish
fact from fiction
Fantasy or wishful thinking
- the taunting
fortunately only on occasion
Echoes of accusations
- hang over (or come from
my head
Ghostly guesses
- and grisly gallows
shake confidence at core
What do you do?
- generates no easy answer
“I talk to dead people.”
Likely not heard
- at the dinner table
of the mentally stable
Truth be told
- I don’t just
talk to dead people
They also talk
- to me
No blasphemy!
Mystery
- mocking mayhem
Famous or infamous
Sinner or saint
- life as a spiritual sensitive
is understandably quaint
Debra Basham 4-8-2018 (WC 153)
Perhaps the Deep Spring Center “Thought for Today” (April 12, 2018) is the perfect closing for this blog post.
“Do not despair that you have no vision. The vision is right here in your own radiant hearts, your kindness and your commitment to your practice. There is not one of you that does not vision a more harmonious world. Hold that in front of you and know that it is possible and then just ask yourself, ‘What will support this?’ Do not be afraid. Hold your vision ahead of you. There is a saying, ‘The dharma takes care of those who take care of the dharma.’ Love will find a way.”
(See Message, Subtext, Metamessage in Healing with Language by Joel P. Bowman and Debra Basham.)
