We cease to be haunted when we cease to be afraid of making what has been untouchable, real: especially our understandings of the past; and especially those we wronged, those we were wronged by, or those we did not help. We become real by forgiving ourselves and we forgive ourselves by changing the foundational pattern, and especially by changing our present behavior to those we have hurt. A fear of ghosts, or a fear of our own haunted mind is the measure of our absence in this world. We cease to be afraid when we give away what was never ours in the first place and begin to be present to our own lives just as we find them, even in facing what we have banished from our thoughts and made homeless, even when we do not know the way forward ourselves. When we make a friend of what we previously could not face, what once haunted us now becomes an invisible, parallel ally, a beckoning hand to our future.
We banish the misaligned when we align with what we are called to, we become visible and real when we give our gift and stop waiting for the gift to be given to us. We wake into our lives again, as if for the first time, laying to rest what previously had no home through beginning to speak, beginning to make real and beginning to live, those elements constellating inside us that long to move from the invisible to the visible. ~David Whyte
a fairly common thread we all weave more deeply into our lives as we move on is trust……as if for the first time- every time…….may it be a guide to the vulnerable hurdles toward deep integrity…..
After early snow
October skies peel back
and remnant summer spices
the day with heat.
One last chance to shed
wool of collar and sleeve
for sun on ribs, the free
swing of skin.Splashing from beyond a bend
slowed my stroke to glide.
Moose I thought, and near.Quiet as an otter close to shore,
quiet as a feather slip canoe and I.
Quiet as mist in shade we round the curve.
No moose or deer;
but a woman full in sun
skin glowing, taut
with the season’s last brisk swim.
Our eyes and smiles greet
each other in surprise, revealing
neither embarrassment nor fear.
Yet I shift my gaze away
to build privacy of close thin air.
Quiet as flight my paddle returns
to flow and muscle,
the embrace of moving water.Behind me I know she stood still
in a robe of rising sun.
And still she stands forever
in that image brief as dream.
I remain startled by clarity.
The line of jaw and arm,
thick braid tumbling
alongside cheek and neck.
River droplets bright with sun
upon shoulder, breast, and hip;
bright with silver like stars
or precious stones
within the dark of her hair.Chance made tangent
our morning reveries,
for we shared the flowing trail.
Yet I can not help the thought
of greater gifts.
Her image lingers as that of all people
that seek the waterways
unfettered in their wildness.
Kneeling within the arc of ribs and rails
I lean to cup river in hands,
to drink the essence,
blessings of waterborne days.
Each sip the kiss of fine October
when wings of snow
danced with fleeting summer,
and a goddess appeared
among bright crisp leaves.
~Garrett Conover
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade,
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-mdddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
~Theodore Roethke
