Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason,
you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing
a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a
reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that
sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past
trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s
when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here
on earth, again and again.
Cutting Loose by William Stafford
At this moment it seems to many of us that the world as we have known it is falling apart. Many of us are being forced to let go of our notions of the political and social order of government. I know it’s been easy to be distracted by the chaos of recent events, but there will always be people who misrepresent your and my reality. When writing the story of your life don’t give someone else the pen. Speaking your own truth illuminates and lessens the suffering in the world. In order to make the world a better place, the changes have to start within each us.
After spending a few days in the bustling city of Bordeaux with my companion, we stopped for an hour in the coastal village of Audenge. During my first holiday season in France some years ago, alone and unsure of the future, I met a family of four women: a mother, her two daughters and her granddaughter, who took me under their angel wings and gave me a sense of home. I was invited to their family gathering on Christmas Day. Even though we were as different as couscous and apple pie, we shared an incommunicable joie de vivre which has remained intact through all of the challenges we’ve faced during the ensuing years.
My companion had never met any of these women. On this day he met two of the four, Odette and her daughter, Fabienne. Exquisitely strong in her eighties, almost completely blind and deaf, Odette greeted us at her front door with open arms. She took my companion on a tour of her beloved garden, which to him seemed a jungle of dead roses and hydrangeas, but to her still retained the vivid reds and blues of summer. Inside their home he met Fabienne, a beautiful woman tragically withering from a rare disease. With courage and aplomb, she struggles to walk and talk. Into this melange of sight and sound my companion was welcomed and instantly felt the warmth of their friendship and love.
I reflected upon my short time with them while driving back home. Under a fluorescent canopy of yellow plane trees, bordering a back highway, I was able to release, bit by bit, the projected confusion, worry, fear and anger I had been feeling by remembering what is truly important, something these difficult times makes it easy to forget. What we do in this short life matters. The choices we make and the values we hold, matter. Taking the first step, bringing light to the dark, writing your own story and listening to other’s stories, matter. Words matter, they define both the speaker and the listener. We will never be able to create what we have not first cherished in our own hearts.
I have always believed that the world would somehow provide for me, and feel tremendous gratitude for all I have received. But the vast majority of people has not been so fortunate and suffers from an overwhelming sense of inner poverty. When we feel safe and valued for who we are by our families, our friends, our communities, and our country, the world becomes a better place. Feeling grateful for what you have at this moment enables you to reach out a helping hand to another.
