This is one of my favorite of many favorite poems by one of my favorite poets — William Stafford.
It’s called
ASK ME
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
I’m sharing this poem because right now, metaphorically, the river IS ice. We seem to be in a time of stillness, not moving forward — and perhaps looking back to what “used to be”. But we know that the current of life is still flowing underneath the ice of our stillness. . .And that one day, the ice will crack and we will see that water that right now is flowing invisibly under the surface.
And so we are taking the time, I hope, to ask ourselves, who have we been? To whom? To what? And why?
And who would we like to become? To whom? To what? And why?
To BE fluid — as a heart-centered practice — is to do as Stafford ultimately does — to become the river. To learn to be fluid.
Because when the ice cracks, it may feel chaotic. And that may come to feel truer than water for a moment as everything breaks up and bangs against each other. But the ice will melt and the river of life will flow again. It’s how it flows that matter.
If we can learn to be fluid, then the jostling will pass, and perhaps we can find a way to recognize and live what is already true: The only true current is Love — and whether we recognize it or not right now — we are all flowing in it together already.
So why not practice the fluidity, the flow, the movement, the togetherness of being this River of Love right now. And then, we can all say when asked: What the river says, I say. What the river does, I do. We are all Love.
#LoveViral
If you’d like to listen to today’s heart-centered practice, here it is: