Alchemists6

Another poem by David Whyte

2005-11-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

What to Remember When Waking
by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk?

The Two Poems from Weekend 6

2005-11-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

The Faces at Braga
By David Whyte

In monastery darkness
By the light of one flashlight
The old shine room waits in silence.

While above the door
We see the terrible figure,
Fierce eyes demanding. "Will you step through?"

And the old monk leads us
Bent back nudging blackness
Prayer beads in the hand that beckons.

We light the butter lamps
And bow, eyes blinging in the
Pungent smoke, look up without a words,

See faces in meditation,
A hundred faces carved above,
Eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
They have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
They have been neglected, but through
Smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

We have seen growing
Through the dust of eroded slopes,
Their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.

Carved in devotion
Their eyes have softened through age
And their mouths cuve through delight of the carver's hand.

If only our own faces
Would allow the invisible carver's hand
To bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
As the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core

We would smile too
And not need faces immobilized
By fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
We ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
And wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
Our eyes are hooded with grief
And our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
To the blows of the carver's hands,
The lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

Feeding the sea
Where voices meeting, praising the features
Of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
Until we, growing younger toward death
Every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

To merge with them perfectly,
Impossibly, wedded to our essence,
Full of silence from the carver's hands.

Self-Portrait
by David Whyte

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
Abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need
To change you. If you can look back
With firm eyes
Saying this is where I stand. I want to know
If you know
How to melt into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward
The center of your longing. I want to know
If you are willing
To live, day by day, with the consequence of love
And the bitter
Unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
The gods speak of God.

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Pics from Lez

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First Day Excitement and Silliness

2005-10-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

First Set of Pictures in the House!!!

2005-10-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

Back to Reality

2005-09-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone- first ever Blog! Apparently my body has decided to clean house after this Weird weekend...migraine, fever, sore throat....anyone else feeling "weird" since coming back to reality?
A mbie

Stand - The Closing Song for Weird Shift Weekend

2005-09-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

With visible breath, I'm calling your name
With visible tracks, I'm finding my way
With a sorrowful heart, I honor this pain
And offer these tears to the rain

In a moment of truth at the top of the hill
I open my arms and let go of my will

And stand with my face to the wind
With the storm beating down on this sacred ground
If I stand for the grace that I've known
For what I believe
Then I won't stand alone
No I won't stand alone

There's a new pair of eyes to embrace all I see
A new peace of mind and it comes quietly
There's a joy in my heart that you've given to me
And I offer this soul's melody

So I beat on my chest till my song has been sung
And I cry like a wolf at the top of my lungs

And stand with my face to the wind
With the storm beating down on this sacred ground
If I stand for the grace that I've known
For what I believe
Then I won't stand alone
No I won't stand alone

When the thundering voices of doubt try to shake my faith, oh
I'll be listening from inside out and I won't be afraid to

Stand with my face to the wind
With the storm beating down on this sacred ground
If I stand for the grace that I've known
For what I believe
Then I won't stand alone
No I won't stand...I won't stand alone