It is the thickening morning of my life, the heat of the gathering noon
Rippling around my still-smooth shoulders.
Some answers have come, though they always seem to take the form
Of a question, and thank the Mystery for that, for I’ve begun to think there are no answers, only the delicious flavor of the Question, and the journey is the pondering.
A koan in a monastery.
A path without destination.
But in the thickening summer heat, as my years near forty and high noon approaches,
It is the question of power that most preoccupies me.
Not dominion, but the unfolding coursing of life through the veins
And the deepening light of consciousness understanding itself.
The power we find to help others lift themselves out of the darkness
Of imagined powerlessness—this is the thread and the skein that weaves
The great web of life.
And it is life that we most fear.
Often it is the gentle securing line that enables us to believe that
We are safe, that life is safe.
The same nurturing cord of a parent that anchors us prevents us from
Embracing the stormy sea of life and thus robs us of our victory over fear.
For are they not one and the same: truly living and conquering fear?
It is the thickening morning of my conscious journey on this Earth.
My path unwinds before me, my very steps etching a course through a trackless
Terrain, which radiates out around me. It is a path I can measure
only by where I have been, and direction finds itself without meaning.
There is only here. And there are questions to be asked.
In a dream I was told that direction is irrelevant (forward/ inward; up/down).
I know a woman who insists that she never moves backwards,
As if retracing her steps were a hateful admission of error.
But how many of us turn back, if only to look for something
We might have dropped, and instead find something far more precious
we would otherwise have missed?
Life is too mysterious for absolutes, for always and never—which are dogmas
In the end, directions which must change with the forces of Wind and Terrain and
Guidance. And our paths stretch not only ahead, but behind, above, below.
The ultimate power is Attention, up-facing, down-turned.
The direction, of course, is irrelevant.
