Tag: beginning

Opening Address

To the morning assembly.

Cat––

Bed, I––

Coffee, I will.

Sink, please help me.

Pillow, will you stay here?

Wonder, find me again in this haze.

Hope, flood through this dark space.

Heart, pay attention, keep watch, and remember.

Head, stop trying to lead and figure. You tend to get in the way.

Feet, hold still while I find the ground. Then get moving and lift me across.

Water, wash my tired eyes, these shadows beneath them.

Pen, carry on and continue to follow these invisible lines, trust the moving hand, however clumsy and dumb, though it keeps dropping the hold. 

We are here today––

Begin again each time it loses the thread, and it is always––

We are here today to––

Dearly beloved. 

We are gathered here to

meet these beginnings.

Reasons to Start Again

Because sometimes the best I can offer any other life, in an age of senseless killing, visible and invisible, is a living reminder that death doesn’t get the last word.

For the breath of new beginning, the stomach-knotting tension of preparing to leap, how it tightens the best web I can make for landing in.  To honor the construction of what is intricately made and yet untested.

For practice protecting the fragile and not-yet-realized: children, the neglected; ancient wisdom and this still-beating heart.

Because when the wind blows a body sideways, sometimes the best way to keep from falling over is by moving with it; because watching a baby learning to walk, not stopping until he hit the next resting place for his hands, or fell down, reminded me of this. 

Because sometimes the best I can offer any other life, in an age of senseless killing, visible and invisible, is a living reminder that death doesn’t get the last word.

Because the opening notes of a familiar song are enough to remind me what music can do. Because I refuse to fail for nothing. Because I want each heartbreak to count for something. 

Because the decaying bits of once-flowering dreams that died on the vine to fall into this soil have left their bodies in it, the inanimate materials of their still-future lives, and I want to bury these hands in their essence and feel what’s still getting ready to be born.