Category: General Learning

Many of us recognize multiplicity in ourselves. Sometimes we are this. But then sometimes that, in the day to day. I wrote yesterday about “every phase of life is developmental.” That means that there is nuance available. That there is learning available. Enrichment too.

David Whyte’s poetry inspires often. Recently, I got link to one of his called, My Courageous Life. As he so often does, David gives voice to the nuanced differentiation, and, to the nuanced integration.

Enjoy this. I did (thx Jeremy Nash of Poetry Tribe for sending). It refreshed my courage and a certain kind of joy.

My Courageous Life
David Whyte

My courageous life
has gone ahead
and is looking back
calling me on.

My courageous life
has seen everything
I have been
and everything
I have not
and has
forgiven me,
day after day.

My courageous life
still wants
my company:
wants me to
understand
my life as witness
and thus
bequeath me
the way ahead.

My courageous life
has the patience
to keep teaching me,
how to invent
my own
disappearance,
and how,
once gone,
to reappear again.

My courageous life
wants to stop
being ahead of me
so that it can lie
down and rest
deep inside my body
it has been
calling on.

My courageous life
wants to be
my foundation,
showing me
day after day
even against my will
how to undo myself,
how to surpass myself,
how to laugh as I go
in the face
of danger,
how to invite
the right kind
of perilous
love,
how to find
a way
to die
of generosity.

I typically have a few ways to catch interesting phrases that people speak. One is a folder on my desk. It holds scribbled notes that inspire on this or that for the connective brain and heart. Another is my inbox. Some random stuff there that occasionally dries with aromatic scent.

Today, Tuesday — three things that move my imagination.

1. The phrase I just read from the 1440 news digest. It’s the jazz musician Miles Davis.
   
   “I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning … Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
   
   Yup. I like the call to create. I like it for the creation — words, art, music, movement, etc. I like it as antidote to destructive noise so prevalent in contemporary reality. I like it for a centering feeling.
   as
2. Then there’s my buddy Glen who is good for wise phrases on the spot. I don’t remember who he was quoting, but it goes like this from our recent call:
   
   “Every stage of life is developmental.”
   
   Glen and I were talking about the new things we are each learning in our respective late 50s and early 60s. We were talking about confusions and clarities. In early life, development is quite physically obvious — you grow a foot at some point. Later, the development is still substantial. Just less visible.
   as
3. Then there’s a pastor that I’m often in conversation with. Michael is someone I enjoy a lot. What he spoke in a recent call, on foolishness…
   
   “I’d rather tell the truth and risk looking like a fool than not tell the truth and be a fool.”
   
   Amen. We were talking courage. And in particular, courage to stand in uniqueness, to stand clear with what comes through our more intuitive knowing.
   as

Tuesday potpourri. To bring some beauty, some learning, some wonder.

My friend Elif writes,
after yesterday’s essence,
kindly and deliciously hosted by Saoirse,
a becoming,
a belonging.

A Sense ( of Essence)

I dreamt a woman – me,
arms filled with white doves
suddenly taking flight 
in all sorts of directions,
and me gasping with surprise,
joy and wonder…

Ah, the delight of 
embracing what is passing and
tingling with what is always here now.
The wonder of it all – of us together.
A leap of heart
into the moment
here we go…

Yup, how good to be guided and companioned
by people, by dreams, by life.
Encouraged to essence.

Do maps come looking for us? I have a feeling they do.
Does beauty come looking for us? I have a feeling it does.

These are learned things for me. Over many years. Over many efforts. And over-efforts. I’ve worked hard in my life to learn things. To seek things out. It’s the diligence that many of us show. So that we can understand. And take part in the world. And do our jobs. And raise our kids.

And yet, in my later years (sheesh), I seem to be noticing (and want to notice) that those things also come looking for me. The maps. The beauty.

It’s a pretty important nuance and evolution to story. From “gotta make it happen; gotta search hard” to “it shows up quite naturally when we see softly; it shows up quite naturally when we anticipate abundance.”

Maps. Ways of seeing. Frameworks to understand the connectedness of things. I am a visual learner — took me until my mid 30s to recognize that. So I like seeing concepts in a collage. Post-it notes. Or circles around words on a page. In color. Maps come to us. Maps that…, want to be created?”

Beauty. Like this bouquet above, now nine days old. Mother’s Day flowers for Dana from her son Andrew. We can be extensive in our search for beauty. Yet often, it’s right here in front of us. Beauty is a vibrancy. A vibration. Yesterday I added to the bouquet our first-cut white Peony of the season.

These days, I so often feel this shift in my day to day. It’s celebrating what arrives, particularly when I release the necessity of struggle. Particularly, when I start with an assumption of abundance.

This learning sounds very spiritual. It is. Yet, my spiritual these days is so much about nuancing a consciousness. From what is hard and efforted. To what is naturally occurring and abundant.

Hmm…

Yesterday, one of those maps arrived to me. I was exploring and journaling about a phrase that I used with a client — “pithy yet potent.” My client and I laughed together because we both knew that the phrase was an in-the-moment thing. I was encouraging her to have courage to name what is small, yet is actually quite big — pithy yet potent. As so often happens for me, I see two or three things that help shape the story.

This time a story of pithy yet potent human behavior and needs —

kindness,
spaciousness,
companions.

Start there — kindness, spaciousness, companions. Do these. Start here. The rest will follow. The rest will show up. The next map. The next bouquet.

Do maps come looking for us? I have a feeling they do. And perhaps, always have. I, and perhaps many of us, are learning to be found.

Does beauty come looking for us? I have a feeling it does. And perhaps, always has. I, and perhaps many of us, are learning to catch it.