The Road to Now

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Regret not the past.
Rather, be grateful for how it shaped your present.
For the past was the road to now.
There is now no other way than the road taken,
And any other path may well have led astray. 
If you must look back,
Look not for failures and wrong turns.
Rather, look for lessons and insights,
For changes and growth.
Look for the you who once was
The better to love the you who now is.

Look where you were
Only to see how far you’ve come.
Now, know how far you still can go.


The Road to Now

The Road to Now

First a smile ~ Then a laugh

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First a smile ~ then a laugh

First a smile
Then laughter

When our heart is broken
Or our soul walled off
First a smile
Then a laugh
 
These are the steps
Through which we rediscover
The step that is love
The healing step
The step which walks through walls
 
First a smile
Then a laugh
These steps are the healer’s first business
 
(for Anna)

The supple vulnerability of love.

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Supple strength embodied in nature

Supple Strength

The supple vulnerability of love

The pen is mightier than the sword
While love is mightier than the pen

Love is
     A fortress without walls
     A sword without edge
     A pen without ink

No army can defeat it
No blade cut it from you
No word undo it

Master the strength of suppleness;
Discover the safety in vulnerability:
Enable the sweetest experience of life,
The supple vulnerability of love.

Letting go, moving on, going forward ~ Camel and Ice

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Camel’s lilting, melancholic and epic instrumental, Ice is among my favourite pieces of music. Discovered on a late-night college radio station in 1979 in Rochester, New York, it stands out on the album I Can See Your House From Here (despite the DJ’s touting of Remote Romance as, “Best on the album”)

I suppose its weepy, wailing guitar and minor chord ridden keys make it a natural mood setter for angst in all its varieties, but for me it’s become a song in three acts: Letting go; moving on; going forward. A long time ago I even scripted, shot and edited in my mind a short, dialogueless film telling that story. It goes something like this:
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Helpless in our anger

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The Heat

Just don’t confuse
The light and heat

Helpless in our anger

Courage borne of anger
Delivers none from sorrow.
Anger begets violence
Upon body, mind and spirit.
 
Violence begets harm.
Harm begets sorrow.
On victim and
Instigator alike.
 
Ever so, this cycle of suffering,
Helpless in our anger.
 


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Intelligence and Wisdom

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Intelligence & Wisdom
Touched by the Intelligence of the Universe

Touched by universal intelligence

Trust the intelligence of the body
Over the intelligence of the mind.
The master learns more
In a mile of walking
Than an hour of reading.

Foster wisdom of the intellect
With study and discourse.
Foster wisdom of the body
With nourishment and exercise.
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Listening for true silence ~ Speaking to common ground

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Staci’s poem, Be Silent ~ Be True ~ Just Be put this song into my head, where it stuck, begging a journey to YouTube while fiddling with internet tasks. In a long list of renditions there, this recording stood out. It’s quieter than the original studio recording, purer, with just the two voices and Paul Simon’s guitar.

And in the first line? My old friend saying, gently, pay attention Peter.

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Be Silent ~ Be True ~ Just Be

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Be Silent ~ Be True ~ Just Be

Vestigial Self

Vestiges of a manifest self,
     Long forgotten,
Writes words
     Better left
          Unsaid.
 
Some truths are better left untold,
     Or risk obscuring the true
          That cannot be told.
 
True is an act of being
     Not telling.
 
So I remind the vestigial self,
     “Be silent.”
 
Be silent
     Be true
          Just be.


Precious Heart ~ finding the path out of darkness

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I commented on a post that I’d post this song.

I’ve been holding onto it, because there are a number of other connotations for it — one of those is a woman, one woman in particular, a soul-mate. But I’m not ready to tell that story, or is it the story that’s not ready to be told?

In that other post, Traces of me ~ In the darkness that is you, we are discussing darkness in a number of senses, and also coming out of darkness. Precious Heart is a song very much about one kind of darkness, and wavering on the edge of falling into it or escaping it. Also, in those discussions of that post, I wrote about how the terror that chases me, so often, into the quiet somnambulent numbness of the darkness will force me to my knees, literally, should I resist it. The lyric to this song also speaks to that, and to the state of putting a smile on your face when you leave the confines of your brokenness to walk in the world.
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