Monday, November 24, 2014
The Admonition
The Admonition
Two workshops, and in each
the leader said to us,
“Claim your power!”
and I puzzled what this might mean.
Should I stand on a mountain top
and shout oracles?
Learn, finally,
to downhill ski?
Win a prize in a baking contest
for best chocolate cake?
“You don’t get it,”
I yearned to say.
At this age
something happens inside.
Your “power” is not just
making things happen.
It is looking around at the world,
with its miseries and concerns
with a certain compassion,
sympathy for the struggles
that never end,
but not trying to “fix it” alone or
turn it around single handed.
It is, rather, to be the silent witness,
the one who observes
and discerns the patterns,
the secret threads
that hold it all together,
encourages the others,
then the one who lets go.
Dorothy Walters
Nov. 4, 2014
