You discover beauty, for one. This weekend the voice inside me said to go see what was going on in the earth, so I spent all day Saturday going around the yard pushing aside the leaves and finding little sprouts of plants and colorful flowers coming up, some of them bulbs I'd planted last fall. Today the same voice told me to look around in My Documents folder. There I found this beautiful flower of a poem, something I wrote in the Autumn of 2011.
There just isn't a whole lot that can go wrong when you listen to that still, small voice inside you. Does that mean that other people won't get annoyed because they have other ideas for you? No. Pretty much the opposite, actually. Expect backlash. People will get annoyed, think you are crazy, and tell you what you should be doing instead. But heed the voice. It is your true soul, the Divine Light within you, and it always leads you gently to a place of unconditional love.
One Voice
I wonder if I would like it if there were just one voice
to tell me who I am
who I need to become
what I need to do. I wonder
if I would like a set of rules to obey, my own
1950's ladies' magazine with that voice
that black and white printed voice, the one of reason
and authority
which so calmly states what my priorities should be: lipstick and tidy hair
and a hot meal on the table for my husband.
There are so many voices to hear now. So many magazines
and books and podcasts and blogs and Facebook posts
with so many voices, each one carved out
into a small market niche, each one branded
in just such a way to attract
just such person who might pay the price
of our souls lost to convention. We think because now we can choose
which convention to follow
that we have freedom.
What we really have is just more
competition for our attention.
Somedays I want the voices
to distract me. I go looking
for someone to tell me
with authority
what to do. I search for something
besides the hard work of going inward
and becoming
very
very
still. I look
for someone to give my life
over to, to save me
from the difficulty and pain
of having to live it.
Today was a day like that. I'm learning
to see it
when it comes. The closer I get
to the poet in me
the easier it is
to recognize the impulse to climb
inside a box and dwell there, instead of
dwelling in the wide open space
of possibility, the place where all things shimmer
with Divine Presence.
Somedays the box feels safer. Somedays I don't want to be knocked down
by the insane beauty of existence. Somedays I'd prefer to trade it
for a clean house,
perfectly applied eyeliner,
and well-behaved
children. Somedays I sell my beautiful
soul for pride.
But then in silence I hear
Be still and Know that I am God
and trade my usual
delicate gold crucifix for the heavier
chained cross whose pewter coldness hangs low
to my solar plexus. I speak sparingly
eating light, going about my work
at home, stopping frequently to pray, mostly for the
return of the spirit flowing in me, which seems lost momentarily
in earth's gravitational pull, as if summer had me flying up in the air
enjoying it's wild ride and now Autumn's inevitable hard bump
of the ground under my behind. You can only fly by the seat of your pants
for so long, I suppose. What goes up, must come down.
I'm sure there are thousands of voices giving good advice
on how to avoid this pain, this place of lying in a defeated heap
faced with the limitations of your own humanity. Somewhere there are voices
certain to remind me
that I could avoid this moment if I would
plan better
work harder
stay focused on my goals. But somewhere there's a voice that says
this life is poetry.
And a poetic life is one worth living.
I'm listening
to that one
voice.
