WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Sunday, August 29, 2021

ALLOW

            More and more, it seems to me that true happiness comes only when I live with the spirit of allowing – when I’m willing to permit more than prevent. I’ve spent far too many years trying to keep things from happening – trying to fence my small self in so that I won’t be hurt by the countless enemies I seem to see around me, enemies like mistakes and misfortunes and fears.  This kind of fencing-in and fending off and turning aside can be exhausting, and now, at 79, I’m tired of being tired, and so I’m doing much more allowing than preventing.  I’m reveling in the joy of simply stepping back and giving life the permission to carry on as it wishes to. After all, life is a generous patron, an infinite, bountiful giver, and all I have to do is stand aside and welcome its bighearted contributions. Daily life’s gifts come in many forms – joys, disappointments, successes, failures, understanding, ignorance – all containing wonderful wisdom wrapped in various ways. My task – my opportunity – is to simply allow. I need to stand aside with a smile and enable life to flow through me with its thoroughness and astuteness. I need to bow and give my blessing to worries and pleasures and troubles and triumphs, for they are all consummate gifts from the grandest of all givers. 

WE CAN ALWAYS COME HOME
A Sonnet

We can always come home again to life
by simply opening this moment now
and seeing that the problems and the strife
of all our days can actually allow 

the light of truth to silently unfold
for us. This quiet, steady, loyal light
is even inside sorrow and the cold 
discomfort of defeat, and just the sight 

of it can help us know that we are still
at home, inside the simpleness of now. 
Each moment is a door that can fulfill
our hopes. We simply have to smile and bow

and truly welcome anything that’s there,
for everything brings light that clears the air.