it is enough...

The sun is out and the snow has fallen: a perfect Berkshires winter morning. The head colds are petering out, albeit stubbornly, and Tucson's KXCI is on blue tooth (check out this near perfect community radio station @ https://kxci.org) Loved ones will gather with us tomorrow night for an intimate time of music and story-telling and on Sunday we share brunch with family and my Sunday School teacher from Vermont. This brings to a close a full month of marking our service to God in the local church ministry. 

Soon a new round of teaching begins. We're planning a modest trip to Ottawa too in order to visit with L'Arche and explore housing options that might be affordable and satisfying for our special needs dog. Locally, new music is brewing and awaiting practice. There is new poetry for compassion brewing as well from artists like Grace Rossman who knocked it out of the park at the recent Four Freedoms "Songs and Sounds of Solidarity" concert.

On the Feast Day of St. Brigid and the celebration of Candlemas, a time when there will be at least 10 hours of sun light in our parts and the earth is shifting towards more light, my heart is filled with gratitude.  A friend asked me, "Do you feel unburdened by letting go of church or grief?" After a pause I replied, "The anxiety and dread are gone so I would say I am experiencing release." But it is quiet release, not at all exuberant. Rather more like David Whyte's poem, "The Winter of Listening," that Parker Palmer recently shared with those who follow him on On Being.

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own.

Indeed, it is enough...