Monday Musings: I Am Still Arriving

Please Call Me by My True Names

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow.

Even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving

To be a bud on a Spring branch,

To be tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

Learning to sing in my new nest,

To be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

To be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

To fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing

On the surface of the river.

And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond

And I am the grass snake

That silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

My legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant

Selling deadly weapons to Uganda

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

Refugee on a small boat,

Who throws herself into the ocean

After being raped by a sea pirate

And I am the pirate,

My heart not yet capable

Of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo

With plenty of power in my hands

And I am the man who has to pay

His “debt of blood” to my people

Dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm

It makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,

so vast it fills the four oceans.

Flowering Fridays: Dropping the Petals

A flower from one of the bouquets sent for Mom's funeral

When flowers are blooming they seem so soft, so delicate and open. So alive and so full of possibility.

Come winter, when the blooms have gone brittle and brown, the flowers seem hardened by the elements and closed off.

They look dead.

But that's just appearances.

The flowers are dead, true, but they are also going inward for winter, cutting back to their bare essence, stoic and silent and waiting for when their seeds will sprout under the warmth of the spring sun.

I feel like a spent flower this week. With grief making me rough around the edges, pulling me inward and a little unstable, as if I will drop my petals at any moment.

I know that grieving I'm doing isn't just for my mom. (Although it's part of it.) I am also grieving the parts of me that kept me from having a different kind of relationship with my mother. I am grieving parts of my life, too, all that I have not yet achieved, all the times I've been too scared to really live and played it safe instead, all the times where I chose judgment or anger over love.

I am finding that there is a dying that happens for the living, too, in our grief.

And while it is uncomfortable for me at times and sometimes I just want to be "over it," I know that this is part of the process.

And I trust that the process is perfect.

My coming into December feeling spent and brittle is exactly what it is needed to bring forth new seeds of being and new seeds of possibility.

For now, it is enough to be with the dropping of the petals, to trust in the timing of their release and to use this time of inward focus to identify what needs to be planted for the coming spring.

(This post is inspired by a conversation my teacher, Jan Smith, had about this metaphor on the conference call this week for the Future Thinking community.)

Monday Musings: The Unfolding River

November kayaking on Oconomowoc River with turtle on log (taken with iPhone)

"I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding." — John O'Donohue

Last week, my friend, Mary Frances, sent me John O'Donohue's healing poem, "Beannacht," after my mom's passing.

This quote was at the top of the link.

I can't think of a more beautiful intention for living life than this.

May this week unfold with ease, flow and surprise for us all.