words to touch your heart

If you are not familiar with poet and songwriter, David Whyte, I’d encourage you to explore his website, http://davidwhyte.bigmindcatalyst.com/cgi/bmc.pl?page=pubpg1.html&node=1025.

I met him at a friend’s house party where he sang, recited poetry and mingled a couple of years ago, and just heard that he’s returning this fall for another gathering. He is amazing in any setting but especially so in a small group.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to gift you with some of his poetry. I hope that his words give you pause and touch your heart.

 

The House of Belonging

 

I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that

thinking for a moment it was one day like any other.

 

But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought

it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room,

it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep,

it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.

 

And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love,

this is the black day someone close to you could die.

This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next

 

and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light, the tawny
close grained cedar burning round me like a fire and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending through the first roof of light the sun has made.

 

This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come,
this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.

 

This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

 

There is no house like the house of belonging.

 

~ David Whyte ~

The True Love

There’s a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never
believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held
out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man
who would walk every morning on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals, who would press his 
hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his 
prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the waters.

And I think of the story of the storm and the people
waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure, 
far across the water calling to them.
And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes!

Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically,
but more subtly, and intimately in the face
of the one you know you have to love.
So that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find, everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage.

And if you wanted to drown, you could,
But you don’t, because finally, after all
this struggle and all these years,
you don’t want to anymore.
You’ve simply had enough of drowning
and you want to live, and you want to love.
And you’ll walk across any territory,
and any darkness, however fluid,
and however dangerous to take the one
hand and the one life, you know belongs in yours.

- David Whyte

David also does large corporate retreats that combine his writing and music to help participants discern how their interior life is connecting with their exterior life: How is who they truly are in their very soul aligning with the person they bring to work — and how does the work environment nurture or dampen those souls?

Who is your favorite poet? What moves you?

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