Author Archive for Mark Nepo
The Necessary Rain
The sparking flame holds against the necessary rain.
—Robert Mason
The human and the being must reach an agreement with each other or there will be no peace for the life that carries them. The human in us must accept that it will never transcend this life into what its heart knows is eternal. It can feel and taste what is limitless but never stay there because being human by definition is to live here with limits. And the being in us, which flies like a bird, must accept that what carries it walks; must accept that while it lives in the sky, the life it is incarnated to help lives on the ground. Our being will always see more and move faster than our humanness, which must step over rocks and through mud. If we don’t accept this imperfect marriage, we will never know its gift. Instead, our being will break our body, insisting that it catch up, and our heart will drag us into impossible situations, insisting that the sun can fit in a thing as small as a dream. And refusing our smallness, we will burn the things we love along the way. Reaching this agreement between what is human and what is spiritual is the practice of meeting the world with vulnerability until who we are releases what we know.
The Empty Necklace
We each have one, made over a lifetime
of the empty moments in between, when
everything is still and complete, each a
clear bead strung on the invisible chain
of our experience.
I’m thinking of the long silence after
we talked for months about what it’s
like to be alive.
Or the time in winter when the snowy
pines were creaking and swaying a
hundred feet up like the eye of the
earth opening slightly.
Or the time in early fall when you
were pinching a pot in the sun
and our dog was chewing on a stick
and I started to cry.
And the moment I woke from surgery
too soon and my soul had to decide
which way to swim.
And sometimes, when the wind sweeps
the next task from my mind, I am
returned to the moment before I
was born: floating with a brief sense
of all there is, just as I was ushered
into the world with our need to
find that feeling between us.
Thinking Like a Butterfly
Monday I was told I was good.
I felt relieved.
Tuesday I was ignored.
I felt invisible.
Wednesday I was snapped at.
I began to doubt myself.
On Thursday I was rejected.
Now I was afraid.
On Saturday I was thanked
for being me. My soul relaxed.
On Sunday I was left alone
till the part of me that can’t
be influenced grew tired of
submitting and resisting.
Monday I was told I was good.
By Tuesday I got off the wheel.
Before the Waterfall
The art of living isn’t that simple. But honesty makes it bearable and everything stripped of its film is bare and sincere. The tree limb cracking in the storm is as honest as the drop of rain coating a sad girl’s lip. We have been misled to think that meaning can be debated. We build meaning by being sincere, by listening to what every simple thing has to offer—letting all the meanings merge. Each sincerity is a language. When what I empty and what you empty find each other, a fullness is born. When the pain that I share finds the pain that you share, love is born. When we can face what is ours to face, and feel what is ours to feel, the heart of our heart throws itself before the waterfall where blessing after blessing is ladled on our sores till we wake and stand full term in the bliss of being ordinary.
The Oldest Conversation
I wonder, will anyone recognize us
without our anger or our fear?
And if we stand here,
softly in the open,
will we be watered
or just mowed down?
Wait. Now that you’re here,
tell me about the moon and how
deer dream of running water
and how dogs are simply dogs.
Teach me—before we’re tossed back
in—the Sanskrit of your eyes.
The Great Wave
Regardless of what is fair or just in a situation, if we cannot face our pain, we will nurture offenses and cultivate love through being a victim. No matter how skillfully we might do this, relationships will fall away till we are sadly left alone with the pain we won’t face.
Sometimes we seek refuge from our pain in the habits of life, as if sheer routine can put our wounds to sleep. But the habits of life can make us all a little squirrelly and soon enough, we don’t want our little nest messed with. We don’t want anything unexpected or different to disrupt the little box we live in. We don’t want anything to unearth the pains we’ve buried. And just about the time we are most inflexible, some great wave of love or suffering crashes over our little box; humbling us into the unalterable fact that all the little boxes we construct are tiresome illusions. There is only one home, only one nest to which we all belong.
For those of us who survive the great wave, life becomes a seeking out of those who speak the language of the great wave. If blessed, truth and compassion become the ritual by which we greet each other: Did the great wave reach you? Was it kind or harsh? What did it break down or open? What did it give you or take away? What have you chosen to rebuild with? Who did you reach out to? Who showed up? Who ran away? Who keeps muffling the questions? Who wants to know what you see?
Just as there have always been hunters and gatherers, and those concerned with hoarding and those concerned with giving away, there have always been those reduced into Oneness by the great wave of love and suffering and those who run further inland; though this great wave covers the entire earth. Humbly, we are always members of both tribes. As for me, I’m usually the last to know; which is why I need the love and friendship of others; which is why I’m committed to being a loving friend.
The Lesson of Winter
It’s been cloudy for days. We feel so gray.
The snow keeps falling. But for an hour on
Thursday night the clouds part and the moon,
almost full, makes everything bright—the ice
like diamonds stuck in the gutters, the garbage
can wheels unable to move, happy to be at rest,
the nose of the deer as it nibbles the apple you
tossed for it to find. Our dog’s eyes, suddenly
full with her ancient bottom of wolf and her
irrepressible love for everything. Breathing in
the cold, the inside of time is close, like a story
held open till the center of all story shows its
face. And every crest of snow seems blue, yet
nothing is blue. The moon so bright it makes
us look for the sun. The way one honest hand
lifting a particular lie makes us look for truth in
the bottom of history. And the sun keeps spilling
its light off the moon, off us, off our dog whose
breath drops it like silver dust on the snow. Now
the clouds return as if the night is a soft magician
closing its robe. In the days that follow, I am com-
forted to know that the truth of all that keeps us
going is just beyond the closing robe. So powerful
it can spill through a torn heart and light our way.
Wu Wei’s Pot
The King asked the Master Potter to shape a pot with a strong foundation and a thin lip from which to drink. Wu Wei had made many in his time. This was a simple request. He asked to watch the King and his chancellors to see how they used such pots. So Wu Wei attended a banquet where he saw the hard use and breakage of rough living. Then he went to work.
He spun the clay on his ancient wheel. But this pot resisted being brought into the world. It would not center. Wu Wei had to hold the clay for a long time before it would yield to his hands. Once trimmed, it had to dry. The King was impatient, wanting something special to show his court. But Wu Wei said that this pot had to be wood-fired for many days in order to tame its shape.
The King didn’t understand but left the potter to his secret ways. Not wanting to fire it alone, Wu Wei sat the stubborn pot on a shelf in his shed for months till the other potters had enough. Together, they fired the large sleeping giant that was their kiln. For one week, day and night, the fire was fed constantly and the King’s pot waited to be born in the midst of hundreds. Not special in the least.
It took a week for the fire to cool. When opened, many of the pots and urns were warped and brightly flashed. When the King’s pot was handed to Wu Wei, it was still warm and the reddest markings made it seem perfect. The lip was thin as flame itself. But the bottom had a crack. Wu Wei was pleased, but tired. He went to sleep.
The next day, he brought the beautifully cracked pot to the King. At once, the King saw the unrepeatable coloring and the utter thinness of the pot’s fine lip. Then he felt the crack underneath. He gave it back, “You call yourself a Master? This is not finished!” Wu Wei put it back in the King’s hands, “The fire always has the last word, your Highness.” The King was insulted and ordered Wu Wei to try again.
Wu Wei bowed and withdrew. On his way from court, a little boy was dumbstruck by the coloring of the pot. Falling to his knees, the little boy could see the sky through the crack in the bottom. Wu Wei helped the boy up and gave him the pot. Overjoyed, the boy ran home and hung the cracked pot from the edge of his roof. Meanwhile, Wu Wei began again.
It took several months but the Master Potter chose another lump of clay, which also resisted being centered. And after stilling it, and shaping it, and fixing its form, after waiting for the others, after stirring the sleeping giant of the kiln once more—another pot was born. This one even more colorful than the last, its lip even thinner. But in the bottom, another huge crack. Wu Wei was doubly pleased as he let it cool.
The next day he brought the second cracked pot to the King who was more eager than before. The King at once was stopped by its beauty. But as he held it, he quickly felt the Godforsaken crack. He smashed the pot and dismissed Wu Wei.
That night, while Wu Wei dreamt of flames cracking the sky, the King dreamt of being a little boy. And as a little boy, he fell in love with cracks and the pots that reveal them. In his dream, the King was startled to see his heart as a cracked pot hung from the edge of a roof. But this cracked heart was his and not his. Somehow it belonged to everyone. And suddenly, those tired of the world were falling on their knees to drink from the rain that was dripping through the crack in the heart that belonged to everyone.
The King woke in tears and rushed to put the smashed pot back together. He couldn’t and summoned Wu Wei to make him another. After several months, the Master Potter returned. This time, the King closed his eyes and searched right away for the crack in the bottom and was relieved to find it there.
From that day, the King forbid anyone to call him King and when alone, he drank from his knees; accepting a drop at a time through the crack in his heart.
The One Conversation
In the interviews I’ve been blessed to have with Oprah, we seem to enter what I would call the “One Conversation,” the one ongoing story of how we spend our time on earth. All our lives contribute to this conversation. All our stories contribute to the one ongoing story. Let me share some reflections on where that conversation has been taking me.
I keep returning to the ever-present riddle, that being who we are is the necessary adventure. It unlocks everything, not because our self is so important but because our essential nature that our self carries is the immediate doorway to everything that is life-sustaining. We learn early on that being who we are means fending off unwanted influence without cutting ourselves off from the chance to learn from others. Regardless of the culture we are born into, it isn’t long after we arrive that everyone starts pointing and telling us where we need to be and what we need to do to get there. There’s no time to really ask why. Soon, things happen and we are thrown off course and now there’s all this effort to win their approval, no matter who “they” are. If lucky, love will distract us more than suffering. If blessed, we are broken of everyone’s plans and regrets and thrown like a hooded bird into a sea of light. If trusting the fall, we find our wings.
The Poems
When starting out, I was so excited
that anything showed up, I thought
I was done. But somewhere along
the way, I realized they are alive
and I wasn’t wrestling them into
view. They, respecting my effort,
agreed to be seen. Not to be re-
vealed, but to be loved. Now I
circle back in the morning to see
what they need from me. Just more
of my attention which starts with me
undressing what I know. For the
longest time I thought I was revising.
It’s more a conversation in which I
keep learning how to listen. And
when I do, they will after a time
pull aside a cloth or cloud to make
obvious the reason they have come.
Follow Us