How to Stand
So OK, now I’m back from the 2-month retreat, getting ready to go off again to graduate from the CDL program, and meanwhile part of my front porch needs rebuilding because it got knocked over when the new steps were being put in (the cost of which will be almost half the cost of the new steps) and my 90-year-old father (who has always had a very hard time taking in what was being said to him, even back when he didn’t need a hearing aid) is insisting that I not go with him to the doctor (even though the last time he didn’t understand what she’d said to him about getting a CAT scan) and beyond that, the new administration is dropping giant bombs on Syria and pretending to send warships to the Korean Peninsula, plus I’m still having trouble getting in and out of my car because my left knee absolutely will not bend the way it used to. Etc. Etc.
So what is there to do, but to learn how to stand in the middle of it.
In
by Mark Nepo
The Mystery needs
authentic souls to bear
witness to it, the way
matter needs atoms to
hold it together, the way
blood needs cells to keep
it alive. So I no longer ask
why but how. Not the
mechanical how. But how
to stand on nothing like
an atom in the center
that is everywhere.