Caretake This Moment

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.
Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
You are not some disinterested bystander.
Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.
Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed
such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will?
Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone.
The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within.
Listen to its importunings.
Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.

There must be time.

Give your best and always be kind.

~ Epictetus ~


I have a way opening up into a path that's still pretty murky and confusing and I'm not sure how it all fits. A leading, though, for sure. This poem ended up in my morning. Paying attention.

Today

Today

The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere

a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays

come down. A tomorrow has come. Open

your hands, lift them: morning rings

all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.

Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,

you could close your eyes and go on full of light.

And it is already begun, the chord

that will shiver glass, the song full of time

bending above us. Outside, a sign:

a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,

“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant

has passed through town, widening streets, touching

the ground, shouldering away the stars.

~ William Stafford ~

Finding a poem for a prayer/meditation retreat. Really, won't any poem by Stafford do nicely?

The Abnormal is Not Courage

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.