You have looked
at so many doors
with longing,
wondering if your life
lay on the other side.
For today,
choose the door
that opens
to the inside.
Travel the most ancient way
of all:
the path that leads you
to the centre
of your life.
No map
but the one
you make yourself.
No provision
but what you already carry
and the grace that comes
to those who walk
the pilgrim’s way.
Speak this blessing
as you set out
and watch how
your rhythm slows,
the cadence of the road
drawing you into the pace
that is your own.
Eat when hungry.
Rest when tired.
Listen to your dreaming.
Welcome detours
as doors deeper in.
Pray for protection.
Ask for guidance.
Offer gladness
for the gifts that come,
and then
let them go.
Do not expect
to return
by the same road.
Home is always
by another way,
and you will know it
not by the light
that waits for you
but by the star
that blazes inside you,
telling you
where you are
is holy
and you are welcome
here.
by Jan Richardson
This poem by the artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church Jan Richardson, feels like a partner poem to the previous one by Mark Nepo. Try reading them together and see how poems can join their voices for a deeper receiving of wisdom.
When I receive this poem, I am, at first, only dimly aware of being lit up by a feeling. What I’m more conscious of, is that I like the poem and want to return to it.
Then staying with it longer I’m asking myself – what is this feeling? It feels like love and energy softly swelling in my chest. Then I realised that I think the feeling itself IS ‘the star that blazes inside you’ that Jan Richardson speaks of at the end! I love how poetry works like this. My heart and body – my inner wisdom – was already awake to the poem and it took my thinking mind a while to catch up to that.
And, of course, my thinking mind then wants to know what the feeling is. Always so curious. A kind of inspiration? A sense of self-realisation, self-reliance, of vitality, calling, autonomy, dignity, inner truth, an ancient tapping in, a primordial empowerment? It’s something in between all of these. An inner star is perhaps the best way to describe it, actually. And so we see the power of metaphor.
The line: ‘No map but the one you make yourself’ for me, describes how we are each king or queen of our own life and bestows the power of this sovereignty upon us, inviting us to walk tall within it.
I love how poems, like this one does, can take us somewhere in the passage of a few short lines – somewhere we would never have thought to go otherwise. It leads me to sense how the moment is full of open doors in the air – sometimes we just need a poem to take us by the hand and open our inner eyes.
PS. Partnering poems for a deeper receiving of wisdom, is something we do a lot in our poetry courses. The next 6 week course begins in November running on Wednesdays at 7pm GMT, 12:30pm Central, 10:30am Pacific
Photo by Jordan Madrid on Unsplash