06/25/2023
We are such little grains of sand
When the world’s heartbreak threatens to take me down, it helps to remember that this is not the only world to which I belong. Like every human being, I have “dual citizenship” and a passport to another world.
I’m talking about the vast and very real world of nature that stretches from the cells in our bodies to all the forms of life around us, then to the nearest stars and beyond to the immensity we call the cosmos. I mean a world so vast we cannot imagine it...
Remembering my “dual citizenship” is not about evading heartbreak. Understanding that I’m an atom in a cosmos that has seen and embraced everything helps me “see life steadily and see it whole.” When I can look at life that way, I’m better able to engage creatively with the here and now, neither crushed by a sense of futility nor lost in fantasy.
Memo to Self: Linger on the last few lines of this poem where William Stafford describes the vastness in which you live as an “everything dance.” If you don’t have a decent mountain or ocean nearby, hang out with a tree, watch the clouds, or stare at the night sky, and join the dance.
Then return renewed to your everyday world, and offer whatever you can to the alleviation of pain and the increase of love, truth, and justice.
[All 10 of my books are at https://tinyurl.com/3ys2285c OR https://tinyurl.com/htjx6ju.]