...the spark behind fear/recognized as life/leaps into flame// always this energy smolders inside/ when it remains unlit/the body fills with dense smoke. - David Whyte, from his poem "Out on the Ocean"
As fires burn across too much of Southern California and people flee homes that have held comfort, I think of the spark beneath fear and another kind of fire. Those threatened by flames today may not appreciate, at this moment, the beauty of the fire within each of us - the fire that lives as Love on the other side of fear.
The 15th century Indian poet, Kabir wrote: "If you make love with the divine now, in the next/ life you will have the face of satisfied desire....
But this may ring as a very abstract thought in the lives of caregivers who have, before them many varieties of suffering and difficulty. It is the last lines (above) of Whyte's remarkable poem that often come to me. If we don't recognize and give vent to the fire of love within each of us, he tells us, than we may fill with "dense smoke." When our life's passion is unrealized, the glory and hope that flickers within us may begin to die out. And we know what happens when a flame is extinguished. It is replaced with a column of dense smoke rising up to irritate our nostrils.
The fact that we are each born with so many gifts is a cause for rejoicing. Does it also create within us a cloud of anxiety that swirls vaguely beneath our consciousness? As we age, do we become too painfully aware of gifts unwrapped - and of the fact that these gifts may never be seen?
I confess my own anxiety around this. I have spent so many of my waking hours trying so many different endeavors (and conjuring thousands more that can never see daylight.) People looking at my resume (see About Me below my photo on the main page of the Journal) often laugh - either surprised or dismayed. How can such an ordinary seeming fellow have done so many different things? I never know how to answer them. But perhaps Whyte answers for all of us. There is a great energy smoldering inside each one of us. I keep trying to release my energy into this world through whatever pathways it may take.
How about you?
-Erie Chapman
