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.

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.

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.

Read the rest of this post.

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.

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.

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.

Mark Nepo ~ Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
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Join your host Marianna Cacciatore as she interviews poet, teacher, and New York Times best selling author Mark Nepo.