You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
As I grow older and more aware, this time of year becomes more and more confusing to me. People rushing, planning, planning to rush, planing ahead, scheduling, looking ahead. My spiritual teachers tell me that this should be a time of joyful anticipation as well. Out of the darkness comes a great light.
Yet don't you find it to be terribly conflicting? The holidays always become a terrible antithesis to my desire to be present in the now. I am finding that for most people this time of year does conjure up feelings of dread and loneliness. Some people find they need to mourn a lost loved one all over again, or a lost period of life, such as childhood. I listen to random conversations in public only to hear over and over again that someone just needs "to get through" the next month.
The only thing that saves my spirit is a feeling of connectedness. As Mary Oliver says, I don't have to be good, or walk on my knees during this season. I am the person who wants better things, I am the person who mourns for a lost one, and plans are invading my calender even though I vowed them away this year.
No matter who we are during the holiday season, if you just look up, you will find yourself in someone. Like it or not, we can't rush ourselves out of the tapestry of hope. So we wait. In not-so-quiet (or sober) anticipation, for the light out of the darkness that announces our place in the family of things.
2 comments:
i love this poem.
i was going to comment but i did a separate post instead.
i couldn't agree more.
you know, this time of year i find myself wanting new stuff more than i do any other time of year...i usually don't shop much and i usually am able to be content with the overabundance of stuff that i already have. but then this time of year hits. when shopping and ads are shoved in my face i have to fight harder than i do any other time to remember that this is supposed to be a special time of year and it has nothing to do with most of what we actually do in december. shopping? no. tree? no. cookies? yes...i mean, no. "out of the darkness comes a great light." i like that line of yours. this is it. the rest is a distraction.
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