For Remembering When Times Are Hard

Have I yet shared with you
how hard this life can be?

But then you likely
you likely already know this
and perhaps even
prefer not to be reminded
for looking into the heart of fear
learning to live in the embrace of not-knowing
the willingness to gaze
into the eyes of your own death
to bear witness
to the breaking open of your heart
with the passing of your most loved and sacred
of Life as you know it
crumbles around your feet
leaving you standing in the quicksand
of yesterday’s resilience

But it is too late
for tomorrow’s birthing
is already growing larger
in the womb of today

as Sun grows dark with predictions
of our demise from self-destruction
and how easy to accept seductions
that live outside our hearts
from those promising solutions and schemes of restoration
to the familiarities of yesterday’s identity
in exchange for submission to their dominion

Oh my!

Is it not such a good
and beautiful possibility
that we can choose love over fear
as origin source and birthright
and though it may take lifetimes

for the play of this remembering to unfold
what greater adventure of discovery
might there possibly be
than coming to rest
in the wonders of the mystery
that this itself—Love—
is who we most deeply and truly are

Reflections:

I drafted this poem as my partner, Dotty, and I learned of her breast cancer diagnosis and prepared to enter an aggressive chemo regime before anticipated surgery and then radiation and perhaps yet more chemo. Within a day or so I received lab results announcing a carcinoma on my nose and surgery soon followed. So then the two of us were navigating cancer at the same time!

For more emotional complexity, the climate talks in Paris, ending today, daily bring home to my heart the rapidly growing loss of species and the human tolls to come of the climate collapse we are in. And as I post this, now near the two year anniversary of the loss of a treasured friend to an aggressive cancer, I feel her absence often… and her presence. For she is still vibrantly alive in my heart.

And this is the thing I guess, isn’t it? This paradoxical embracing and celebrating the gifts that can come with a broken heart, while honoring the accompanying sorrow, is to say, “Yes!”, to Life in some profound way. The gift of many loving friends helps me enormously in this. And time in nature renews my spirit and body as well, reminding me how much indeed I do love “this one wild and precious life,” to borrow a phrase from the poet, Mary Oliver.

Meanwhile Dotty continues to meet the challenges facing us with courage and clarity of intention and of spirit. And for this I am graced and grateful.

Holding you all, dear beautiful friends, in gratitude and love. Thank you for your care.