Through the hotel wall a woman cries,
“I can’t do this anymore!” One soft life
in one small box in thirty-story boxes
across the city. She sends her alarm like
a cell letting the body know it can’t hold
up its part anymore. If I were a superhero,
I’d put my hand to the wall between us
and with my X-ray vision, I’d search her
heart like a surgeon of love, pouring light
from my palm through all the walls so they
could disappear for one long moment,
enough for her to heal herself. For I have
slumped against my own walls, unable to
continue. But I am only me. And so I put
my hand to the wall between us and draw
as much of her suffering as I can, the way
a shaman would suck venom from a
snakebite and spit it in the grass.
~Mark Nepo
you walk so close to the bone……no need to explain yourself….
inquiry for today~ how can make a little more space for all of the discomforts that keep you hidden from joy?
The art of being sensitive strengthens our resilience when we dare to love what is. Loving what is means accepting the truth of whatever moment we’re in. But loving what is also means keeping our heart open long enough to feel and accept everything else that is happening at the same time, around us and beyond us. By feeling our way through what we’re given, we enter a heartfelt ring of awareness that keeps expanding. We feel the pain we’re carrying, and then we feel the light on the oak we’re siting near, and then the laugh of a child playing across the street, and then the wind lifting the hawk gliding above us, and how the sun casts its warmth on so many lives moving through their own pain and joy in the same exact moment.
~Mark Nepo
