Breath and Wings for the Onward Journey

Trusting that We Will Be Carried

Many thanks to those who posted a comment or wrote to me privately after last week’s article, “You Can’t Hold On to Sand.” Writing that essay was a beautiful, intense, sometimes frustrating, yet deeply gratifying process. Both the process and the essay continue to work on me.

Two days after the article was published, I came across David Whyte’s poem “What I Must Tell Myself.” I’ve known this poem for a long time, yet it’s been quite a while since I sat with it. Finding it again after writing “You Can’t Hold On to Sand” felt like coming home again. While it’s a long poem, there are several sections that touch me deeply in this moment of my life and the times in which we are living. I’ll share those excerpts here interspersed with my own reflections. You can find the poem in its entirety in David Whyte’s collection The House of Belonging.

I begin with the opening stanzas.

Excerpts from What I Must Tell Myself
by David Whyte

Above the water
and against the mountain
the geese fly through the
brushed darkness
of the early morning
and out into the light,

they travel over
my immovable house
with such unison
of faith
and with such
assurance
toward the south

cresting the mountains
and the long
coast of a continent

as they move
each year
toward a horizon
they have learned
to call their own.

Photo by Adrien on Unsplash

Every spring and fall, I take great delight in watching the Canada geese migrate high above the rural New England landscape. Reading David Whyte’s words, they travel over my immovable house with such unison of faith, I can hear their familiar honking cries as if they are flying above me right now. And I am reminded that my life is, in fact, built on a constant and abiding faith that I will somehow always be taken care of—that my house is built on solid ground and is immovable in the most reassuring way. Yet while my house is immovable, my spirit has learned to bend with the wind. My wings have learned to carry me to faraway places where I meet new worlds and experience new cultures and ideas, and then bring me back home again.

I know this house,
and this horizon,
and this world I have made.
I know this silence
and the particular treasures
and terrors
of this belonging
but I cannot know the world
to which I am going.

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I have known and loved many places; many horizons are emblazoned in my memory. I have created, and continue to create, a wonderful and fulfilling life, even if I have not always felt at home in it. I’ve had my share of treasures and terrors, some of my own making and others not. I know well the world I have lived in, yet the world that awaits beyond the horizon I can see remains unknown.  

For much of my adult life, I have paid attention to Life’s invitations and said Yes. Looking back now, however, I realize how little I knew about what saying Yes would, in fact, mean. Yet time after time, I found breath and wings to carry me, sometimes soaring effortlessly on thermal currents, other times struggling against the elements to reach unknown destinations. While my intellect doesn’t quite grasp the meaning of from one hushed moment to another, something deep in the heart of my being totally gets it.

I know
my innocence
and I know
my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

And the world works
on my behalf
catching me in its arms
when I go too far.

I don't know what
I could have done
to have earned
such faith.

Sometimes I lose connection with that faith. Yet every time I falter, I inevitably find it again, even if just in the nick of time. I only have to look back at all the times in my long life when things could have gone very wrong, yet they didn’t. I’ve been blessed over and over again, held and supported by unseen forces of Love.

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and even in stillness
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

We are all part of a great migration that, like it or not, is taking us to another place. That’s what happens when life breaks open. Painful as it may be at first, new possibilities await, even if we can’t yet see or sense where the other place is or what it will be like there.  

And though all the things I love
may pass away and
the great family of things and people
I have made around me
will see me go,
I feel them living in me
like a great gathering
ready to reach a greater home.

Nothing of our past is ever lost to us. The people, places, feelings, and experiences of our lives all live on somewhere inside us. They are woven into the fabric of our lives. I wrote last week, “The fabric of my life is multi-colored and multi-textured. Some parts are smooth as satin; others are rough-hewn, prickly, even razor-sharp and stinging. Some of the edges are beautifully bound, while others are torn and frayed. It’s all there—everyone I have ever known, everything I have experienced, every bit of ground on which I’ve walked, all that ever came into my life and went away. And even the seeds of all that is yet to come.”

David Whyte describes it as the great family of things and people I have made around me … [are] living in me like a great gathering ready to reach a greater home.

All that has been in some way gives rise to all that will be. There is more to come. What if all of us together can be a great gathering finding our way to a greater home?

When one thing dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese traveling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

In a later version of this poem, the first lines of this stanza read:

When one thing dies
all things
die together,
and must learn
to live again
in a different way…

I love the addition of the words “must learn.” That when one thing dies, the entire constellation of life around that one thing now must learn to live in a different way. Life is moving very fast; change is happening very quickly. And we are constantly learning to live in new constellations of people, relationships, events, and realities. The more frequently the constellations of our lives change, the more energy and focus it takes to adapt and find our way.

And then those words everything wants to go home…to an unknown land where we belong. Belonging. We humans are pack animals, and pack animals long to belong. We long to be embraced and accepted and a part of something bigger, part of a greater whole. Yet sometimes we struggle to believe that’s possible.

This morning they have
found me,
full of faith,
like a blind child,
nestled in their feathers,
following the great coast of the wind
to a home I cannot see.

We are living in an uncertain world. We know our past, yet we don’t know our future. I find reassurance in David Whyte’s words. This poem helps me reconnect with what I know to be true, with the heart of my own experience, with my faith that somehow, I will be carried—that Life will always find me when I am lost, and nestle me in its feathers and carry me to each successive home I cannot see.  

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Resources:

·       The Center for Transformational Presence 

·       Alan’s Books

·       Coaching and Mentoring with Alan

·       Meditations for Changing Times

·       Upcoming Programs in Transformational Presence

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