KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

~Naomi Shihab Nye~

Source: Oprah Newsletter

REDUCED TO JOY

I was sipping coffee on the way to work,
the back road under a canopy of maples
turning orange. In the dip of woods, a small
doe gently leaping. I pulled over, for there
was no where else to go. She paused as if
she knew I was watching. A few orange
leaves fell around her like blessings no
one can seem to find. I sipped some
coffee, completely at peace, knowing
it wouldn't last. But that's alright.

We never know when we will blossom
into what we’re supposed to be. It might
be early. It might be late. It might be after
thirty years of failing at a misguided way.
Or the very first time we dare to shed
our mental skin and touch the world.

They say, if real enough, some see God
at the moment of their death. But isn't
every fall and letting go a death? Isn't God
waiting right now in the chill between the
small doe's hoof and those fallen leaves?

~Mark Nepo

Excerpted from Reduced to Joy by Mark Nepo.

Source:Oprah Newsletter

ON THE WAY TO WINDSOR

On the Way to Windsor
By what road did you come?
I can tell by your eyes—
you lost something along the way.
Were you hurt or did you do the hurting?
Me? Both.

Did you drop anything willingly?
I know. That's a hard one.
I seem to have lost everything
that identifies me.
My heart's become a knapsack
with torn little holes.
I knew we’d meet like this.

Oh, there are those who keep to themselves.
When the wind sounds like a loved one,
they come out and squint.
But tell me, what does it mean
to dream on this side of suffering?
That we can rest more?
That we can hear small birds
unlace the dawn?

It seems very simple now.
We can finally talk
when there isn't much to say.
It's quite beautiful, isn't it?

~Mark Nepo

Excerpted from Reduced to Joy by Mark Nepo.

Source: Oprah Newsletter

BEHIND THE THUNDER

I keep looking for one more teacher,
only to find that fish learn from water
and birds learn from sky.

If you want to learn about the sea,
it helps to be at sea.
If you want to learn about compassion,
it helps to be in love.
If you want to learn about healing,
it helps to know of suffering.

The strong live in the storm
without worshipping the storm.

~Mark Nepo

Source: Oprah Newsletter

WAY OF THE DOLPHIN

Standing in the harbor,
these slick wonders slip their fins
in and out of early sun.
I close my eyes and remember
being wheeled into surgery
all those years ago;
believing my job was to meet
my surgeon at the surface,
so the rib he had to remove
would slip out,
like a dolphin of bone,
as soon as he would cut me.

I've learned that everything that
matters goes the way of the dolphin:
drifting most of the time out of view,
breaking surface
when we least expect it.

And our job—in finding God,
in being God;
in finding truth,
in being truth;
in finding love,
in being love—
is to meet the world
at the surface
where Spirit slips
out through every cut.

~Mark Nepo

Source: Oprah Newsletter

WRITTEN WHILE RUNNING

Sometimes I move so fast it hurts.
Though the things coming at me
are not moving at all.

They are soft and inviting.
It's approaching them as if
they will vanish
that makes them sharp.

Running into any point
makes it a knife.

~Mark Nepo

source: Oprah Newsletter

ON THE RIDGE

We can grow by simply listening,
the way the tree on that ridge
listens its branches to the sky,
the way blood listens its flow
to the site of a wound,
the way you listen like a basin
when my head so full of grief
can’t look you in the eye.

We can listen our way out of anger,
if we let the heart soften
the wolf we keep inside.

We can last by listening deeply,
the way roots reach for
the next inch of earth,
the way an old turtle listens
all he hears into the pattern of his shell.

~Mark Nepo

Source: Oprah Newsletter