Getting into a groove...

Two poems have been swimming around my head and heart over the past few days ~ and I think they speak to the groove I am getting into.  The first, by the late Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, is brief:

And so
it has taken me
all of sixty years
to understand
that water is the finest drink,
and bread the most delicious food,
and that art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.

During the few days after Easter that we were away, we rested and feasted and prowled through the various independent bookstores in search of beauty and insight.  We have also been playing/reading/doing "kokology" for the past three days...

Kokology is the study of kokoro (Japanese: 心) which in the aforementioned language means "mind" or "spirit". The series of Kokology books were created by Tadahiko Nagao and Isamu Saito,^[1] a professor at Rissho and Waseda Universities in Japan and an author of a number of bestselling books regarding psychology and relationships. The main focus is the analysis of the deep psyche. Using theories from Freud and Jung. Kokology Questions typically are "guided" Day Dreams or Submodalities (Wikipedia)
These guided explorations have been insightful and provocative for us both - fun and challenging - and brought to mind this poem by Mary Oliver:

Everyone should be born into this world happy
   and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring
Hallelujah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
   almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
      and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
   is every easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Hallelujah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

With lots of rest - and modest walking - I have a willingness to go deeper:  I can see and name my wounds, return thanks for the healings and wonder what God has in store for me next?  And as I start to see my 60th birthday on the horizon, I find it is easier to both own and release my sins, too so that life becomes simpler and more gentle.  How does the reading from I John for this week put it?

If we say we have fellowship with God while we are walking in the darkness, we lie and do not do what is true. But if we walk in the light as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with all that is sacred... If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, then God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is a good groove...