In honor of the Winter Solstice, I’m letting three poets do a “guest post” for me this week. I’m grateful for David Whyte, Judy Brown and Leonard Cohen for reminding us about dark and light and fire and air and to forget our perfect offerings.
I’m grateful for Nature’s reminder to sink into the quiet of these days and I’m doing my best to heed it even as our culture tells us to artificially light every corner and sugar-coat every minute.
As our precious Earth tips back toward the sun, may you find the peace in the dark, the hope of the light, the air that feeds the fire, and celebrate the crack in everything.
SWEET DARKNESS
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
From ‘The House of Belonging’
Poems by David Whyte
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
FIRE
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
~ Judy Brown, from The Sea Accepts All Rivers
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen, Anthem