Create a Clearing

Clearing
by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.

I know that this poem is a bit romantic when it comes to the way life unfolds, the decisions we make, the ones we are afraid to make, the ones made for us.  But I also realize that the meditation that I have been doing these past few years has been a part of creating this clearing.  I awoke today at about 4:30am with all the usual tapes playing in my head:  "you let people down, you are like Jacob - a birthright stealing s.o.b who runs from consequences, you can't stay sober" (four-freaking-thrity - who needs a rooster outside when there is this?!).  So I got up, came down stairs, made coffee and sat amid these voices.  In the not so distant past it was the presence of these voices that formed the center and circumference of my life.  I understood that regardless of the direction that I took that these voices would exist.  They free-float looking for and creating opportunity to add comment to my life.  In the silence it was Rowan Williams song I heard:  "what would it be like to know you are held in an unconditional regard, to allow the reality of God's gratuitous and relentless love be the reality of your life?" and "what would it be like today to hold others in that same gaze?" (Rowan hasn't used these words to my knowledge but this is the gist of what I think he might say).  I found myself led to this clearing today - it's not perfect, the voices are a part of the treelike, but so is peace, so is acceptance, so is beauty and for today that is enough.

I love you brother.