And you — what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down —
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: "Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I'm through
with blooming".
You are not obliged to be beautiful You don't have to shine. Blooming will happen when it happens. If you can be still for a moment you might notice that the roots that feed you are still reaching silently through the dark.
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I have an interest in the word "you" — the address that intimates use for each other, that yearning we might have, that sense of addressing self, other, Other, the void, the past, the unknown, the deeply known. That word allows me spaciousness without definition, and I like it, so I regularly repeat the word "you", in Irish, with the in and out of breath, until I've forgotten who is speaking and who is being addressed. ("The eye with which I see God / is the eye with which I see myself", my bewildering friend Meister Eckhart says.)
Is this a prayer? Sure. Is it a prayer? Why not? Is it a prayer? No. Is it? Yes. Too many years of theological study have immunized me from any interest in definitions that ask the impossible of the intellect. I'm interested in practices and signposts to the present. And breath is such a signpost, such a practice, and such an infinity.
~ Padraig O'Tuama, "On Breath" from his email, Poetry Unbound