know yourself

The second commandment is to love others as you love yourself.  How can you expect to love others if you do not first love yourself?

I want to clarify the poem, "The Journey".  In part it sounds selfish and egotistical-why should one leave everyone else to in order find oneself?  We are taught to extend ourselves to others, love others, move others.  But this is not stressed enough-how can you truly do that unless you know yourself and love yourself?                     

I don't think we can save ourselves wholly within our own power and strength on our own and for our own selves-but we do each of us decide our own place in the world and that place touches others and together we become a whole entity that both gives to each other and takes.  We can give more easily when we know what we have to offer when we understand ourselves and know ourselves.   Also take from others all the "more" that they hold in their hands, I have learned it is just as hard to take as it is to give.

Another thought, the great loneliness that hangs over each of us will never leave, at times the hunger will be filled in others and our experiences shared but in the end we do walk out alone, we can not carry them out with us.  And so who are you?  Who I am?

The sociological viewpoint claims that I am only what others have taught me to be, I am not untouched by their ideas of me, I become how they view me but I want to go beyond that.

Who am I?  In the darkness when the voices have been stilled and there is nothing left.  I suppose there are many answers to that question, and this all seems so trite.  What is the point of being anyone unless someone recognizes it and calls it out?!  And so there-we do need people and yet the initial burst begins with you and you alone.  You choose your place, you tell others how to treat you, it is you who runs through the memories of your day before bed and you who must wake up with the thoughts that burden you in the morning.  YOU YOU YOU.  The emphasis is on you.  What will you do with it?  But the real root of YOU lies in everyone else.  You are You because of them.  

If I was alone long enough would I fade into nothingness?  Perhaps.

Life is a fine balance, a walk between the self and the other.  It is presumptuous to believe that only you can save yourself and just as presumptuous to believe that in forgetting yourself you can save others.  Let the two walk hand in hand, life is the infusion always of two things.  God and human kind, man and woman, friend and foe, self and other, night and day-you and your journey.  In the end it is only you and you will be asked,  "What are you holding in your hands?"

So be alone, find yourself in a dark wood, move in the silence-know yourself.  In knowing yourself you will save your life, and because you have saved it you will have the opportunity to give it.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

on birthdays eve

Here is the poem Bethany gave me for my birthday:

Grown-Up

Was it for this I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?

Disclaimer:  I should hope to always keep the wonder of a child with me, to find joy in the little things, to not dismay when grown-up reponsibilites take root and to always remember to dance and play. Life is really too short to be only grown-up and no child.

1 am

dear life

I have not squandered you

you still stand as though transfixed

by what has been done and what will be

dear sky

I have not reached your limit

you still beckon me

limitless endless then and now

dear God

you have not deserted me

my darkest moments still sing You

You permeate my deepest longing

And when I am weeping

I am ripe

If I had grown in some generous place-

if my hours had opened with ease-

I would make you a lavish banquet.

My hands wouldn't clutch at you like this,

so needy and tight.

Then I'd have dared to squander you,

you Limitless Now.

I'd have tossed you into the ringing air

like a ball that someone leaps for and catches

with hands outstretched.

I would have painted you:  not on the wall

but in one broad sweep across heaven.

I'd have portrayed you brashly:

as mountain, as fire, as a wind

howling from the desert's vastness.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

in winnipeg

I feel you as I feel the cold

close and crinkling up my spine

my song is life

I sung it in the dark

and the world moved to the sound