All too often, our days just get very full. Full of doing, full of noise, full of so much that we don’t even notice the days going by.
And so as we finish up this month of Allowing, we’d like to invite you to take a little time to just allow whatever is, to be.
Here are three poems, the first two by beloved poets you may know and the third by our own Odyssey collaborator, Carolyn Chilton Casas. May these words invite you to sit with allowing in different ways, through different lenses.
The first speaks primarily to allowing as an individual – and the promise of finding the beauty within. The second to giving the gift of allowing in regards to others, and the third, to find compassion for us all.
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~ Derek Walcott
Dropping Keys
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
~ Hafiz
Allowing
If I am to allow life its natural course,
let me bend like grass
that sways with the wind.
Let me take note that even
when it’s flattened to the ground,
there’s no breakage, no separation
of the plant from its roots.
When jostled by worrisome events,
let me take a step back, breathe
deeply into my fast-held belief
that I am cared for.
Let me also remember those
who are suffering more
than anything I can imagine.
The tools I’ve found for healing,
let me hold them close—
the mentioned breath,
time in silence and contemplation,
energy of hands over heart—
the peace I count on
to emanate from these things.
A crow walks about on the roof,
pecks tek tek tek at the skylight
above my head, reminding me to bow
like nature to the ministrations
of the wise, free flowing
lifeforce that moves us all.
~ Carolyn Chilton Casas
As we end our month focused on Allowing, perhaps take a few minutes to reflect on just what you have allowed in the past, and what you’d like to allow in the days to come.
The wisdom lies in the difference between the two and will provide input for our next phase of metamorphosis, Shedding.
See you next month!
