Author Archive for Mark Nepo
Moonglow
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
In November, Sounds True will publish a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published.
One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged.
The following piece is an excerpt from the book.
Moonglow
The moon on the frozen elm
was a lick of eternity that said, You
will go soon enough. Linger with
me. And so I did. I stood there
till the cold crept into my boots
and the moon spilled up my face.
The thin blue shadows on the
snow were so bright it seemed
a day had stayed on to tame the
darkness from getting darker.
Then a sacred space opened
that I can’t quite explain.
A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, tell the story of a time when life made you stop and linger. Once you stopped, what did life have to say to you?
Still
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
In November, Sounds True will publish a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published.
One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged.
The following piece is an excerpt from the book.
STILL
After so much pain,
I still want to be here,
the way a minnow tossed
in a puddle wakes and
flips itself silly.
Somehow we go on,
loss after loss, like seeds
drowning in their possibility
under all that snow.
From a distance, stars
are pins of light pushing
back the dark.
But inside, each
is a world of light.
And the Spirit we carry—
that carries us—flares like a
star, everywhere we go, push-
ing back the pain and loss.
Still, a star can’t be seen
without its covering of night,
nor a soul without its
human skin.
I don’t know why.
It has nothing to do with
optimism and pessimism
or with triumph and defeat.
More, the irrepressible reach
of a beam of light entering the
darkest place it can find, because
that is how it fulfills itself.
How we take turns, as the star
and the dark place, how we
complete each other.
A Question to Walk With: Describe a time when light has filled you against your will.
Willfulness
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
In November, Sounds True will publish a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. The following piece is an excerpt from the book.
Willfulness
(for Nur)
To inhale
enough of the world
when you’re told
you have cancer
so the dark fruit
never seems larger
than your orbit.
To do what you
have never done
to stay in the
current of life.
To fly 1000 miles
to meet someone
you dreamt
might help.
To pray in tongues
you’ve dismissed.
To think in ways
others distrust.
To use money
like a shovel
to dig
for time.
To cross
the grasslands
between us with
a tongue like
a machete
cleanly
sweeping
a path.
To weep
when the pain
won’t stop.
To breathe slowly
when the weeping
won’t stop.
To insist
that friends
don’t pamper you
or look at you
as sentenced
or contagious.
To slap the thought
from their eyes
with your heart.
To climb the days
like mountains
for moments
like summits
where the light
spreads your face
and the constant
wind makes you forget
the pains in
getting there.
To stand as tall
as the weight
you are bearing
will allow.
To rely
on your spirit
which waits within
like a thoroughbred
for the heel
of your will
in its ribs.
To feel
the vastness
of night
and know
you still
have love
to fill it.
To accept
you can snuff
in a gust, but
to stay devoted
to the art
of flicker.
A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a loved one or friend, describe someone you know who is both gentle and strong.
The Slow Arm of All That Matters
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
In November, Sounds True will publish a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. The following piece is an excerpt from the book.
The Slow Art of All That Matters
I have fallen through and worked into
a deeper way—one step at a time, one pain
at a time, one grief at a time, one amends at
a time—until the long, slow arm of all that matters
has bowed my estimation of heaven. Now, like a
heron waiting for the waters to clear, I look for
heaven on earth and wait for the turbulence to
settle. And I confess, for all the ways we stir things
up, I can see that though we can stop, life never
stops: the lonely bird crashes into the window
just as the sun disperses my favorite doubt, a
sudden wind closes your willing heart as the
moment of truth passes between us, and the
damn phone rings as my father is dying. All
these intrusions, majestically unfair, and not
of our timing. So we spin and drop and catch
and land. And sometimes, we fall onto these
little islands of stillness, like now, from which
we are renewed by our kinship with all and that
irrepressible feeling resurrects our want to be here,
to push off again into the untamable stream.
A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a loved one or friend, discuss what it means to you that life is “majestically unfair.”
Upon Seeking Tu Fu as a Guide
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
In November, Sounds True will publish a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. The following piece is an excerpt from the book.
Upon Seeking Tu Fu as a Guide
And so I asked him, how is it God is everywhere and nowhere? He circled me like a self I couldn’t reach, “Because humans refuse to live their lives.” I was confused. He continued, “You hover rather than enter.” I was still confused. He spoke in my ear, “God is only visible within your moment entered like a burning lake.” I grew frightened. He laughed, “Even now, you peer at me as if what you see and hear are not a part of you.” I grew angry. He ignored me, “You peer at the edge of your life, so frantic to know, so unwilling to believe.” Indeed, I was frantic. He was in my face, “And now that you have cancer, you ask to be spared.” I grew depressed. He took my shoulders, “For God’s sake! Enter your own life! Enter!”
A Question to Walk With: What is keeping your from entering your own life?
Things Carried Through the Fire
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
We have a sacred history with those we remain bonded to. We know what each scar and crease in their life means.
Things Carried Through the Fire
My grandfather’s Talmud.
Your picture of Uncle Billy.
The innocence of our dog.
The things I never show the
world. The things I never show
myself. The things we believe in.
The dream I no longer need.
The uncertainty at the center
of all my plans. The small flame
that keeps changing names. Now
the days burn like bones, slowly
and all at once. And what we
thought would last burns like
wax. Under it, everything.
A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, talk about one thing dear to you that you’ve carried through the fire of life.
Nothing Else to Say
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
Even on good days, there’s always a sliver of resistance burrowed in the bottom of our character, just to keep us humble.
NOTHING ELSE TO SAY
An orchard in May
thousands of blossoms
hiding the fruit and
after a long day
the sun intensifies
flushing out the one
crow hiding like the
one dark thing we
won’t let go of.
A Question to Walk With: Journal about a resistance you carry in the bottom of your character and how it serves you or hurts you.
Lost Speech
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
The truth of things waits out of view ready to surprise us when we least expect it. I learned the truth of this while out in the marsh one day at twilight.
Lost Speech
The more that falls away,
the more knit I am to things
before they speak; drawn into
the waters of silence. When I
listen carefully, I am drawn be-
low the words of those speaking,
into the current using them, as the
wind uses a reed to get animals to
stop chewing and widen their
eyes. I once followed sunset
into a purple marsh and
stepping on a fallen log,
the tangled brush tugged
the trees to sway. Hundreds
of cranes lifted and I was un-
done. I am now devoted to
the lost step that brings
us into the open.
A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a time when nature surprised you.
Inside Out
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
Everything in nature is bruised and worn. This is how each tree and hill gets its beauty. We are no different.
Inside Out
I was taken aback, when
joining a fitness club, at
the history of my body: a
rib removed, torn ligaments
in an ankle, torn muscle in a
knee, torn meniscus in the
other, arthritic thumbs, a
skull bone worn thin
by a tumor.
At first, I felt battered,
but smiled to realize that
I stand like a small cliff
worn full of holes in which
stray birds nest and I wake
with the dreams they have
while resting in me.
Each question carried
for a lifetime opens
like a hole worn in stone
through which the wind
finally sings.
A Question to Walk With: Begin to describe the history of your own body and how life has shaped you.
Honoring Your Friend
Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.
If we would only honor our soul with the same commitment we honor dear friends.
HONORING YOUR FRIEND
Each of us has a particular piece of wisdom, which we might describe as truth made possible by love. Each of us with a bit of eternity that if not brought forward will be lost; or at least stay silent during our time on earth. This piece of inner wisdom which is in everything and yet which you alone carry doesn’t have a name. We could call it your soul. So as you would honor a grandparent or a teacher, how will you befriend your soul? What kind of relationship will you have with the oldest part of your life, so it might speak to you?
A Question to Walk With: Describe your relationship with your soul.
