The Sway of It All

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

We tend to be preoccupied with difficulty and happiness, driven by experience from one to the other. But what life has keeps teaching me is that difficulty and peace are always happening at the same time, and that a primary challenge of being human is let both in. Our job it seems is to hold both at once. The reward is the experience of Oneness. This poem speaks to this.

 

And so I lift my face from the mud,

the mud of my past, the mud of history,

the thick and ragged bark of how we

think everyone but our own darkness

is the enemy, I lift my face like a worn

planet spinning on itself to get back

into the light, to say to no one, to

everyone—it is an honor to be alive.

 

A Question to Walk With: Is there mud in your history? Is there a gem that you’ve found in the mud? How would you tell this story to a child?