Mark Nepo's Blog, page 14

We are here to love the light out of each other. It’s not...

We are here to love the light out of each other. It’s not something we can plan or build, only ready ourselves for. My wife Susan is one who sees the light in my darkness. This is what relationship that endures can do. This reflection explores such grace.

On the Edge of God’s Shimmer

Lives unlike mine, you save me.

I would grow so tired were it not for you.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

I must confess that cancer ruined me for small talk. I seem drawn only to the core and bark of things. When younger, it came through like fire and scared off others. But with the years, it has thinned into light and others come. I am not alone in this. It’s how we learn to love each other. Our fires don’t lessen, but refine and transform over time into a light we can’t resist. I’ve grown in the light of so many. All of us suns that don’t know we’re shining.

 

Especially you. I am in awe of your heart and don’t know why God has granted me this special grace to live with you. For what you love comes to life, including me. My heart has been turned inside out sweetly, as when the moment of loving and being loved bursts open with all its surprises, coating the world with a strange and beautiful honey. I feel it as I write this.

 

As the fire we carry dies down, the light we’re left with spills over our darknesses. We stand in awe, on the edge of God’s shimmer in the smallest crack, till all that’s left is what’s essential. I feel the delicate web, certain that we knew this in the beginning.

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe someone who loves the light out of you. How does this happen and what does it feel like? If you haven’t, tell them of the power and gift of their love.

In Your Company

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

One of the wonders and rewards for being open to life is that we chance, through our authenticity, to experience the essence of all those who ever lived. When we love completely, we chance to feel everyone who ever loved. When we listen completely, we chance to feel the presence of everyone who ever listened. I was up early, before sunrise, when I fell into one of these moments and wrote this poem.

 

In Your Company

Up early, my breath still

visible in the coffee, the stars

still conversing in their glitter

before our noise makes them

retreat. I feel the groove of my

awe. There is a comfort in this.

Up early, alone, standing on the

same shore as those before me;

staring at the same pins of light,

feeling the same ounce of wonder,

the way a small wave lapping at the

bottom of a cliff briefly feels every

small wave that has lapped

there before.

 

 

A Question to Walk With: Discuss with a friend a moment in which you felt both your own particular life and the sense of other lives before you and around you.

 

Thou Art That

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

At ninety-three, my father is failing. He’s in between worlds, close to both life and death. We’ve slipped into a time of presence more than conversation. At times, he surfaces like an old whale, offering bits of this world and the next. This poem comes from that precious time.

 

Thou Art That

Again, I make my way to you.

I don’t want you to die. But I

love what death does to you. It

softens your face, and makes you

empty your pockets to show me

what you’ve carried for so long.

Here, a small stone from Prospect

Park when you were a boy and the

model boat you built glided into

shore nudging against it, as if the

gods were giving you something

to hold on to. You want me to

have it, though there’s nothing

in your hand. I see it father, I see

it. I take this small nothing from

you, ready to carry its secret

that no one can translate.

 

 

A Question to Walk With: Go to an elder in your life and ask them what they see from where they are in life. Journal what transpires and, at another time, share the whole story with a loved one.

 

 

Lineage

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

Beyond family or the culture and religion of our birth, life will lead us to discover the lineage we are a part, the circle of kindred spirits that nourish our soul. The difficulties of living can often make us put this lineage aside to deal with trouble first. I’ve done this and found myself lessened for putting what matters last. This poem speaks to how draining it is to put trouble first.

 

Old Friends, Old Teachers,

I never meant to crowd you out.

At first I would drop anything

when you would appear. And

then, it was the noise of the world

that made me save you for a more

sacred time. It was obstacle after

obstacle that drew my attention,

while I kept you like a prize for a

quiet simple day. No one told me to

make this separation. I just started

to keep what matters from what

needs to be done. I began a

life of clearing debris in order

to live in the open. But there is

always more debris. And after all

these years you’ve never failed me;

always waiting in the noise, in

the pain, in the thing

to be cleared.

 

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe one way in which you’ve put tasks before things that matter. How can you reverse this and recover the priority of embracing what is sacred?

The Hard Human Spring

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

Sitting on a bench in Central Park in New York City, I was watching an ancient oak whose roots were woven into massive stones. It wasn’t long till I began to reflect on how those stones let the roots in and how the roots found their way into all that stone. It wasn’t long before this poem about our very human journey of roots and stones appeared.

The Hard Human Spring

We are each born with a gift hidden in

a wound, and many years to birth it, each

given a heat to carry and rough seas to calm

it, each seeded with a worthiness, and love after

love through which to accept it, each called to

enter sorrow like an underwater cave, with the

breathless chance to break surface in the same

world with everything aglow. If we make it this

far, we can, on any given day, marvel that clouds

are clouds, and name ourselves. We can use the

gift born of our wound to find an unmarked spot

from which to live. If we settle there, giving our

all without giving ourselves away, the heart

within our heart will flower and the whole

world will eat of its nectar.

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of your gift and the wound it’s been hiding in, growing in? Given this, what is the one thing your heart needs from the world to open completely? And what is the one thing your opened heart can give to the world?

 

No Strangers in the Heart with Tami Simon of Sounds True

Tami Simon speaks with Mark Nepo, a poet, philosopher, and New York Times #1 bestselling author who has published 13 books and recorded eight audio projects. Mark has been interviewed twice by Oprah Winfrey as part of her Soul Series radio show and was interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. A cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. With Sounds True, he has released the audio programs Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art and Holding Nothing Back: Essentials for an Authentic Life.

Log in here to access the recording or the audio file.

Once you’re in, scroll down to Session 18 with Mark.

 

Getting Closer

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

This week’s poem explores the cloudlike veils that come between us and our direct living of life. Sometimes, we have to part the veil with our mind. Sometimes, we have to let the wind of our heart blow it open. Sometimes, we need the love of others to part the veil for us.

 

Getting Closer

Go on, the voices say, part the veil.

Not with your hands. Hands will only

tangle the hours like a net. Get closer.

So you can part the veil with your breath.

The world keeps moving in on itself. It’s

what it does. Cobwebs. Opinions. Moss.

Worries. Dirt. Leaves. History. Go on. Put

them down and get real close. Open your

mouth and inhale all the way to the begin-

ning, which lives within us, not behind us.

Then wait. When something ordinary starts

to glow, life is opening. When the light off

the river paints the roots of an old willow

just as you pass, the world is telling you to

stop running. Forget what it means, just

stop running. When the moon makes you

finger the wet grass, the veil is parting.

When the knot you carry is loosened,

the veil is parting. When you can’t help

but say yes to all that is waiting, the veil

is parting.

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe a veil that you experience between you and life? What do you imagine would happen, if you could part the veil? What might you stop or quiet in your life that might part this veil? What small thing can you do today to begin this effort?

How We Make Our Way

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

Over a lifetime, we are humbly changed by things we often don’t notice along the way. We’re often connected to other life we’re not aware of. This piece bears witness to such connections.

How We Make Our Way

When he hits the conga with his palm, it feels like color splashing in a wave. When she bounces the bow lightly on the strings, it feels like stones dropping in a lake. When their offerings circle the old man in the audience, it reminds him of the small hall in Europe where he first heard music as a boy. He can still smell the cigars in the lobby at intermission. The concert ends and the conga and viola go back to sleep. But he stays longer than the others, feeling at home in the empty hall.

In the outskirts of a city, a thief tired of running, stops to pant and hide behind a stonewall built by someone he’ll never know. He slouches and looks at the small thing he stole, unsure why he took it. The policeman who will find him has just run a light. He senses he’s close but is stopped by a young woman coming out of a café. The late light illuminates the tattoo on her ankle. She reminds him of his daughter whom he hasn’t seen in two years. The tattoo is of a small bird about to fly. In the soft light it seems like the part of her he’s lost. Now he feels like he’s chasing himself.

The old woman fills her pot from the ancient river as her granddaughter watches. The sun coats the lip of the pot and they carry the water between them back to their small home. The old woman feels the weight of the water moving in the pot and the strain of the little girl. This is how we make our way, carrying the weight of water between us. A thousand miles away, a farmer’s horse stops and the farmer, who whipped the horse when both were young, undoes the reins and rubs the horse’s face, puts his head up close, and the same light that coats the lip of the old woman’s pot warms their heads.

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe the impact of something or someone along the way that didn’t seem to matter when you first encountered them? What brought the significance of this encounter into your awareness? How has it changed you?

Near the Light

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

Sometimes, in the midst of working through frustrations, it’s possible to glimpse the truth that, though I’m frustrated, not everything is frustrating. Sometimes, in the midst of sadness, it’s possible to glimpse that, though I’m sad, not everything is sad. This poem came upon me while in such a mood.

 

Near the Light

I’m saved by what is timeless.

Can taste it though it fills no cup.

Can feel it though it can’t be seen.

 

Yesterday, an old brooding song was

sung low, making the afternoon drop

its shoulders. Even the wind circled

back. I dropped my napkin, glad to

feel that old ache waiting like a lucky

coin I rub but seldom look at. Every-

one broods and holds on to what they

think is lucky.

 

I’m saved by your laugh, which stops the

crows of pleasure and pain from pecking

at each other inside my head.

 

This morning I tried three times to read

something I’ve wanted to read for years.

But you were sick and the car broke

down. And waiting for the tow truck,

I stood in the shade of a locust tree.

The patches of sun reminded me

that we’ve already arrived.

 

A Question to Walk With: Identify a mood of frustration or sadness that you are currently struggling with. Without denying or minimizing your frustration or sadness, let your mind and heart open beyond your struggle and describe, if you can, life around you that is not frustrating or sad. What does it feel like to allow both to take up space in your mind and heart at the same time?

 

Going Home

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

For all the dreams we dream and things we work toward, we sometimes stumble into a moment when what waits inside our dream somehow comes true. This poem speaks to such a moment.

GOING HOME

It was the middle of the day.

Early September. Light skirting

out from under the leaves. I was

taking the compost to the edge of

the yard when I saw you pinching a

pot on the old bench near the bird

bath we’d lugged from Albany. Mira

was lying in the grass, sun closing her

eyes. Something in the quiet light

made me realize that we were now,

in this moment, all we’d hoped for.

I put the can down and sat next to

you. Watched your hands shape

the clay. I wanted to run my fingers

through your hair. A small cloud

bowed and the sun warmed my

hand on your knee.

 

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a moment when life suddenly felt complete, with nowhere to go and nothing to work toward. What led to this moment.