Saturday, November 19, 2022

Picking Up The Light


Photo credit: Blake Lasater

“ Living Awake - by Julie Fehrenbacher


It begins with an ache, a deep-belly

breath, a cup of hot tea on the sun-soaked deck.


It begins with a prayer said aloud

to the empty kitchen, space enough to hear

the want beneath the want beneath the want.


It begins with a thank you

for what is, a remembering that all

of it is temporary, none of it guaranteed, every

last bit of it precious.


It begins with slowing to the pace of silence,

then getting closer, closer

than you have ever gotten before. Then even a little bit closer. To breath, river, heartache, 

sunlight. Because, as Yeats said:


‘The world is full of magic things

waiting for our senses to grow sharper.’


It begins, always, with a moment fully allowed.


It begins over and over and over again, new, every day—

with the courage to persist, to do it differently, to walk

the way only you can walk. The courage

to stand all the way up for what holds and heals, to fiercely declare that enough is enough—no more excuses, no more holding in or back, no more pretending

to be small, damn it. Because you are not small. You have never, ever been small.


And God, how this sleeping world needs your bigness.


It begins with picking up the light

and dancing with it all night long, vowing 

to never put it down. And then scattering it 

like seed to every hurting heart.


It begins with a thank you for what is, a remembering 

that all of it is temporary, none of it guaranteed—


every last bit of it precious.”


~ ©Julia Fehrenbacher : Painted Path 

www.juliafehrenbacher.com

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