Humility - Brian Doyle

 

You cannot control anything.
You cannot order or command everything.
You cannot fix and repair everything.
You cannot protect [people] from pain
and loss and tragedy and illness.
You cannot be sure you will always be
employed, or healthy, or relatively sane.

All you can do is face the world with quiet grace.

When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story
in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or
several at once, sometimes;  when we are older we take on
other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you
and I both know men and women who become trapped in
the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately
imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to
escape who they no longer wish to be;  but finally, I think, if
we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with
humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief....
and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and
true about humility.

Humility does not mean self abnegation, lassitude, detachment;
it's more a calm recognition that you must trust in that which
does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly
ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture.  You
must trust that you being you matters somehow...

[and that]

.....pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy...

[and]
You do your best to reach out tenderly and touch and elevate as
many people as you can reach...

You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath
you draw.  Humility is the road to love.  Humility, maybe, is
love.  That could be.  I wouldn't know; I'm a muddle and a 
conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder,
trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards
of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

Brian Doyle

Excerpts from the chapter - "The Final Frontier"
From: One Long River Song

~

Photo from the Internet

The Invitation - Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become
shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can....dance with wildness and
let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember
the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can hear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your
own soul...

I want to know if you can see beauty, even if it's not pretty,
every day, and if you source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver
of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much
money you have.  I want to know if you can get up, after the
night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done...

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be
here.  I want to know if you can stand in the center of the fire
with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have
studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside,
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if
you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Oriah
From: The Invitation

~

Art - Woman Dancing in the Fire
(looking down from above, her arms and hands held out
in front of her)
Done with Craypas oils and fingers

c.2012

 

Trust - Truthless Truth

Underneath the surface,
deep inside the dugout,
a place of low light,
but sheltered from pain,
lies the hell of commonplaceness,
the wasteland of self-deception and struggle.

Above the surface,
out in the open,
a place of wonder and awe,
where the sun equally shines on joy and pain,
lies the promised land of unknowing,
the kingdom of self-acceptance and peace.

Allow vulnerability,
surrender your armor,
drop your mask,
come out into the world,
naked,
as you were born,
and every butterfly,
will awaken your inner child.

Trust...

at Truthless Truth

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering