You Must Learn One Thing

What might be today's answer to this inquiry for you?

Riffing on a line from a beloved poem by David Whyte…

a stag seen crossing a branch of the Provo River last night

You must learn one thing:

Your love matters.

It matters to the people you touch with your hands and your listening, your kindness and your signals. It matters to the animals you stroke, feed, or to whom whisper admiration. It matters to the waters you sip, bathe in, offer as a libation; the waters you admire in the light and in the dark, in their stillness and in their flow. It matters to the trees you witness. And it matters, dear one, to your own aching, weary heart.

What I really want to say is that I don’t want to hear any more about why we must get hard and tight and sharp with analysis or othering or outrage and speak it on public platforms at the top of our lungs, if we are not also becoming, perhaps not loudly but truly, the waters of love to soften the hard edges, to carve timeless canyons through what seems immovable, to water the seeds of beauty that may bloom any day now, or bloom in a far distant time.

What I really want to say is – let us be the waters of love, pouring over parched lands, over the wounded places within and without.

Rosemerry prayed “open me”

and she prayed “thank you.”

I too, treasure these prayers.

I want to add this one:

May I use all that arises in my life to turn me into the waters of love

and then let me pour forth, pour forth, pour forth…

(Imperfectly)

Our love matters.

And love is not one thing,

but a plenitude, emerging in ever-fresh expression.

I loved hearing the story that when David Whyte wrote Sweet Darkness, he found himself having written the line on his paper, “You must learn one thing,” and had no idea what might come after as he sat there staring at the page. (It turned out to be: “The world was made to be free in.”) I imagine my answer(s) to this inquiry might change day to day. Here’s what came to me recently. I’m writing this to my own achey, heavy, weary heart today, and also to you.

What emerges through you if you write or say: You must learn one thing. ___

I’d love to hear.

a dear friend during a recent moment of love pouring forth