May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.
May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.
When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.
May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And you never become a functionary.
May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.
May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.
May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.
AXIOMS FOR WILDNESS
Alive to the thrill
Of the wild.
Meet the dawn
On a mountain.
Wash your face
In the morning dew.
Feel the favor of the earth.
Go out naked in the wind,
Your skin
Almost Aeolian.
With the music inside,
Dance like there is no outside.
Become subtle enough
To hear a tree breathe.
Sleep by the ocean,
Letting yourself unfurl
Like the reeds that swirl
Gradually on the sea floor.
Try to watch a painting from within:
How it holds what it never shows.
The mystery of your face,
Showing what you never see.
See your imagination dawn
Around the rim of your world.
Feel the seamless silk of the ocean
Womb you in ancient buoyancy.
Feel the wild imprint of surprise
When you are taken in by your lover’s eyes.
Succumb to warmth in the heart
Where divine fire glows.
7
Beyond Endings
Endings seem to lie in wait. Absorbed in our experience, we forget that an ending might be approaching. Consequently, when the ending signals its arrival, we can feel ambushed. Perhaps there is an instinctive survival mechanism in us that distracts us from the inevitability of ending, thus enabling us to live in the present with an innocence and wholeheartedness. Were we to be haunted by the prospect of ending, we could not give ourselves with freedom and passion.
Endings are strange. Usually they leave us disturbed and bereft. For instance, when we look back on a relationship that ended, there is often such a contrast between the innocence and joy of how it initially unfolded and the soreness and protrusion of its ending. Back then we could never have imagined or foreseen such an ending. Yet somehow within it the seed of such a conclusion must have been already germinating. How quietly and irreversibly inevitability can build within something; during each new stage it is strengthening its grip on finality. Sometimes in the unfolding of a situation, there can be a moment when the danger of the ending is glimpsed. Action can be undertaken to engage with the forces that are in collusion with finality; with difficulty and concentrated care, the situation can be retrieved and renewed. Often the very threat of ending can be what animates and develops a relationship. Indeed, the prospect of death is probably the greatest single inspiration of human creativity and passion. The brevity of our presence here is suddenly brought into sharp relief and intensifies our sense of urgency.
On the other hand, endings can be such a relief. When we suffer, we long for it to end. When we are in pain, time crawls. It also darkens and imprisons our imagination; consequently, we are unable to see beyond the suffering that plagues us. Often the greatest gift in such a situation is when someone manages to persuade the eyes of the heart to glimpse the vaguest brightening. Then the imagination takes hope from that, and constructs a path of light out of the darkness. Such endings offer great promise and bring us to the edge of new possibility. They are nascent beginnings. This is one of the fascinating characteristics of consciousness. Unlike the world of matter, in the world of spirit a whole territory that has lain fallow can become a fertile area of new potential and creativity. Time behaves differently in the domain of spirit.
Experience has its own secret structuring. Endings are natural. Often what alarms us as an ending can in fact be the opening of a new journey—a new beginning that we could never have anticipated; one that engages forgotten parts of the heart. Due to the current overlay of therapy terminology in our language, everyone now seems to wish for “closure.” This word is unfortunate; it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skin and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word completion is a truer word. Each experience has within it a dynamic of unfolding and a narrative of emergence. Oscar Wilde once said, “The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.” When a person manages to trust experience and be open to it, the experience finds its own way to realization. Though such an ending may be awkward and painful, there is a sense of wholesomeness and authenticity about it. Then the heart will gradually find that this stage has run its course and the ending is substantial and true. Eventually the person emerges with a deeper sense of freedom, certainty, and integration.
The nature of calendar time is linear; it is made up of durations that begin and end. The Celtic imagination always sensed that beneath time there was eternal depth. This offers us a completely different way of relating to time. It relieves time of the finality of ending. While something may come to an ending on the surface of time, its presence, meaning, and effect continue to be held and integrated into the eternal. This is how spirit unfolds and deepens. In this sense, eternal time is intimate; it is where the unfolding narrative of individual life is gathered and woven. Eternal life is eternal memory; therefore, it becomes possible to imagine a realm beyond endings where all that has unfolded is not canceled or lost, but where the spirit-depths of it are already arriving home. AT THE END OF THE YEAR
The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.
As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;