Author Archive for Mark Nepo
A Spiritual Problem
When circling what is sacred without touching what is sacred, it’s all we can do to find the thread of what matters. Mostly the thread finds us when we least expect: when things are going well and a sadness comes to dinner; when finding a picture of someone you buried long ago and in their eyes is a softness you never knew. Holding what matters at arm’s length in order to dissect it seems like a personal problem, and it is, but it’s also a spiritual problem that has set human beings at odds with their gifts.
In the beginning, the gods interfered to occupy their endless time on earth until we silenced them, became them. Then it took another thousand years to find the god within. Now it is we who interfere to occupy our limited time on earth, we who pull apart everything we need and poke at everything that is not us, until we fall into the silence that restores what we have known forever but run from: That fame is no reason to do good, and fear, no reason to do bad. Our lungs breathe the sky in every breath. Our heart feels the sea in every feeling. The mind sees beyond itself when it stops insisting it’s the thinker. These acts of being have their own continual reward. If we can animate them and let the sky, sea, and all that is beyond us help us and inform us.
There is only one conversation. Each of our lives is a sentence in its story. Loving is the art of putting down our want to be the hero. Listening is the art of threading all the stories. Once threaded the light in all of us is opened. It is the light of all that matters. Drinking of that light brings us back to life.
The Descent
How do we live in a world
where all things are true?
Yet we do. Like a pebble
tossed in the ocean, each
soul dropped into the world
floats slowly, though to us
it seems so fast, while a thou-
sand things come together, tear
apart, prey on each other, grow
from the bottom, leap for the
light, scatter from sudden dis-
turbance. All the while, the
soul drifts lower and we resist
the drift and trouble ourselves
about purpose and where we
are headed and if we’re thrown
off course. But there is nothing
more quietly beautiful than a
soul entering the sea of
existence, finding its place
below all the noise.
For the Moment
It was in Vancouver
at breakfast, before my
second cup of coffee.
I had a moment, a long
moment, before the next
task showed its teeth,
before the meetings began,
and the clink of silverware
glistened slightly, and the
coffee warmed my throat,
and I fell into the well of
a silence that was there
before I was born.
For the moment, the
thing that waits behind
my tongue dropped way
down behind my heart,
like an iridescent fish
hovering under all that
water near the center
of the earth.
Now the phone is
ringing. The emails are
flitting, and the voices
in the hive of which I
am a part are mounting.
But the coffee is
steaming and my mind
for now is clear and the
path between it and my
heart is open and I
finally have nothing
to say.
In the Hut We Call the Self
I’ve been listening way inside where the Universe rushes up through me like wind through a hole in an old door in a hut near the edge of a cliff. It is an ancient door, the one inside, and an ancient hole in the hut we call the self. I’ve been going there and listening, sitting on the inner edge of everything. There, I’ve heard two irrevocable truths: the truth of life, the very fact of it, how it comes out of nowhere like a strong breeze to lift our faces, how it goes on its way; and the truth of how life like a storm can rough up our hearts, how we have no choice but to feel that wind move through us and around us. Trying to give words to this is difficult. But the first truth can be inferred as the truth of things as they are, and the second as the experience of being human. These have become my teachers: trying to accept the nature of what is before me and trying not to deny its impact.
So when you ask, “What are we here for?” I’m stopped by this wind which rushes up through the hole in my heart. From this far down, it’s like asking the cliff itself what is it here for. We might say, to hold up the world. The cliff might say, to be the world. I can only say that my heart and eyes and mind keep forming.
Let me tell you what life is like in the hut these days. Like many of us, I have known centeredness as a calm and the experience of difficult feelings as forms of agitation. Like many of us, I swing between these poles: needing to calm down when stirred up and wondering how long the calm will last before I’m stirred up again. Like many of us, I’ve come to associate the lack of agitation (lack of pain, fear, confusion, or anger) with peace and the presence of such agitation as being pulled into the tangle of the world.
I’m learning, though, that the absence of agitation alone is not necessarily peace and that the presence of such difficult feelings does not mean we are necessarily off-center. Rather, the task of being fully alive challenges us to stay in the center while feeling the full range of life on earth. This is quite a task, which I’m not sure how to do. Nonetheless, listening way inside to these two teachers—the truth of things as they are and the experience of being human—I find myself here.
This all descended on me recently when I found myself drawn, again, into relationship with a person who didn’t mean what he said. The details don’t matter. Just that this person was unreliable and won’t accept that he broke his promise. There are a thousand reasons and, for sure, I have not lived up to all the promises I have made. But this time, it ripped me. I could feel my heart tear like old denim in the same spot it has torn before. And for all my practice at not having expectations, at letting go, at surrender and acceptance—this disappointment ripped me.
What’s most interesting here is how I’ve been jarred, after flipping back and forth, into feeling both centered and hurt at once: accepting that the situation won’t change and, at the same time, not shutting down what the disappointment feels like. I’m not trying to run from the agitation in the name of peace, but trying to relax my being until I’m spacious enough to be a container for both: the peace and the agitation. This is new and I’m not doing it or being it well.
Not surprisingly, this race between peace and agitation, whatever the cause, has reached its limits. For the peace and the agitation are stitched together and, tugged on, they unravel a thread of Oneness. It’s enough to make me break down the ancient door in the hut of my self, so the wind of life can bluster through. But then, the whispers that arrive one by one through the ancient hole way inside, the whispers we know as truth, would be lost in the unfiltered fury of the wind.
We’re Intimate Now
It’s early March, the snow almost gone. From my upstairs window, the old ragged oak, leafless. It just happens that the sun is rising right behind its trunk and now the hot star slips between its upper fork, the light splitting everything. Just for this moment, the old naked tree seems to be crucified on the dawn of another spring. And the light has enhanced everything for spilling through the tree. It blinds me as it illumines the world. As I start to see again, I think of Leonardo’s drawing of man, arms and legs spread; bringing into view a circle that connects our small heart spinning in the center to everything. So maybe this is how it works. Sooner or later, we must spread ourselves to life, naked, mouths open; our small hearts always spinning in the center waiting for the light. The old oak will never be the same. We’re intimate now. The sun has gone on to warm the rest of the world and the tree has settled back into its weathered form. The early light has come and gone off my face, and I have settled back into ordinary perception. But we have been lighted. Just now, a fox trots slowly across our yard. He stops and looks up at me, then disappears.
In Love with the World
There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away or fall off the cliff we thought sacred or even burn the home we dreamt of. But when the rain comes slow at a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you—that place opens like a wet fist that can no longer stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know I am here. The rain keeps misting my face. I am alive. What majesty of cells assembles around this luminous presence that moves around as me? How is it I am still here? Each thing touched, each breath, each glint of light, each pain in my gut is cause for praise. I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet, with every child’s eye, with every fallen being getting up. Like the worm cut in two, the heart only grows another heart. When the slash in my open hand heals, I try again. Birds migrate and caribou circle the cold top of the world. Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering, making our wounded-joyous cries: alone, then together. Oh praise the soul’s migration. I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you. I am in love with the world.
On and Off the Path
It’s the light above the path
that points to the path that
makes it a path.
The way the sun off the moon
lights the oar with the peace
we were looking for while we
sleep it off adrift in the boat.
It’s the light above the heart
that points to the heart that
makes each path necessary.
The way going there always
brings us here. The way loving
another always brings us
to ourselves.
It’s the light we drop and
leave that makes each
giving a path.
The way a carpenter builds
home after home; knowing
that the sawing, the planing,
the hinging, the building
is his home.
It’s the light we are but never
see that makes each soul a path.
The way the blossom of all
we feel and all we hide makes
the search for beauty unnecessary.
Going Inward
I’ve been walking the acre
of my soul. It’s been so long.
And there’s the hill I used to
sit on. I’d watch the stars reflect
in the river when it was tired of
running. I wonder what the view
is now. But it takes at least a day
to get there and another to sit still
in the grass and another to wait for
the stars to come out and another
for the river to tire. Sure life keeps
taking us away. But the only time
I’m free of fear is when I drink
from that river.
The Early Sky Is Degas Yellow and You Are Still Asleep
I love this time of day. The only leaves left are
small silhouettes against the sky. They will go
unnoticed once the world wakes. Yesterday
while we were driving, George was setting
up the sawhorses outside his shop. As we
rolled through Parchment, the sun I so love
flooded the intersection and I couldn’t see the
light was red. I started through it. You called out
and I blamed it on the sun. You questioned my
sight. We argued briefly. Then you wondered if
I should be using a table saw. I bristled at the
limitation. The sun then flooded on you. And
for a moment, I was able to drop my stubborn
denial that things are slowly breaking down.
For the moment, I could step out of me and
see how hard it is for you who cares so much
for everything you love. I know saying I’ll be
careful doesn’t always help. But as we turned
onto E Ave, I felt how much you love me. So
much goes unnoticed once the world wakes.
We are small silhouettes against the early
sky. I love this time of day.
Going Home
It was the middle of the day.
Early September. Light skirting
out from under the leaves. I was
taking the compost to the edge of
the yard when I saw you pinching a
pot on the old bench near the bird
bath we’d lugged from Albany. Mira
was lying in the grass, sun closing her
eyes. Something in the quiet light
made me realize that we were now
in this moment all we’d hoped for.
I put the can down and sat next to
you. Watched your hands shape
the clay. I wanted to run my fingers
through your hair. A small cloud
bowed and the sun warmed my
hand on your knee.
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