The Song of Your Life
We find our true selves in the quiet spaces between thoughts
Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite
This is such a beautiful poem. I happened across it this morning and, as is so often the way, it matched perfectly with my train of thought.
The image of the dense forest is one I have come to recognise in my journaling over the years. It’s funny, I have always thought of the floor of my mind as being like a forest floor, leaves falling onto the rich loamy soil, composting down into first leaf litter, and then earth.
Now, of course, it seems apt because in thinking about Autumn and Winter – the feeding of the soil and the quiet, secret magic that happens within the earth during the cold of winter – that is what has happened in my head.The leaves of experiences, thoughts and emotions, down the many years of my life, have fallen to the floor and rotted into a rich compost that now holds the seeds of who I am.
The theme of waiting is echoed in the wonderful Rumi poem, which I return to time and again when life feels fraught: ‘If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.’ The idea of sitting quietly and waiting is so alien to our contemporary lifestyles. Yet we can
all benefit greatly from taking a moment, here and there throughout the day, to pause, to notice our bodies, our sensations and our feelings. To pay attention.
And, as I come back time and again, to my North Star, paying attention to the living world around us grants us so much possibility for pause, for patience and for solace.
*This post was written with the help of Gilbert and George who have waited patiently by the keyboard for the action to start up again.