Messages

A Message from Space

Everything that happens is the message:
you read an event and be one and wait,
like breasting a wave, all the while knowing
by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna -- a dish
aimed at stars -- and they themselves are its message,
crawling in and out, being worlds that loom,
dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up
eye and ear -- suddenly we fall into
sound before it begins, the breathing
so still it waits there under the breath --

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills
where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied
stillness unfolding their careful words:
"Everything counts. The message is the world."

~ William Stafford ~

I've been reflecting quite a bit on messages. I guess this whole Quaker practice of vocal ministry reframed my thinking a bit, although I'm one of those people who tends to look for a message in everything, thus my probably reflections this week. I've been trying to lean into my life a bit more and just figure out what message it holds for me. Why so much consternation regarding a job that is probably not a true vocation, at least not where I find myself now? Is it the final letting go of previous images of myself? Why do I seek to define this situation in terms of old paradigms?

Parker Palmer talks often not of "way opening", but "way closing". And something does have to close in order for something else to open. So that's where I am today. Watching. Waiting. Trying to greet all this change and the chaos that follows with an open heart so I don't miss the message.