We are asked to live in companionship with patterns and dynamics that are either disappearing, have not fully emerged or can never be fully named;
patterns perhaps already changing into forms for which we have yet no language.
It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances
as much as by gifted appearances,
allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living
David Whyte, The Poetic Narrative of our Times
In a dark time, the eye begins to see
Roethke, In a Dark Time
A day like Good Friday bears witness to a truth that runs through all the different wisdom traditions, namely, that the times when we are challenged and hurt are often the moments when we grow the most. Thus places of darkness are difficult and fruitful at the same time. This truth needs to be remembered in a culture that focuses on perpetual youth, continual progress and ongoing self-improvement: :
Life may be brimming over with experiences,
but somewhere, deep inside,
all of us carry a vast and fruitful loneliness wherever we go.
Etty Hillesum
photo mark 10:43
All things change when we do
The first word “Ah”
blossoms into others
All of them true.
Kukai, 774–835, Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet.
How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things teach us: to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, II, 16
We have enormous expectations that our careers will provide satisfaction in our life, and however well or unwell our jobs work for us, in the second half of life we often find ourselves working for them, with decreasing satisfaction even as we accomplish our goals, collect our paychecks…If the soul could be bought so easily, then our culture would easily work. Only the unconscious think it does. Look around you. Look within you. Be honest. How well does material affluence work? And what is the price?
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.
photo of London underground train by Chris Downer
It is a sign of great inner insecurity
to be hostile to the unfamiliar
Anais Nin
photo leo hidalgo
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