Look behind to understand. Look ahead to dream. Look down to be present. Look inward for truth.
“At fourteen, I couldn’t see things as clearly as this, but I instinctively understood that power is beguiling and a person does not lightly give it up. Power will bend the truth and warp their own values to maintain their grip on power. I was a child of Africa, a white child to be sure, but nevertheless Africa’s child. The black breasts that had suckled me and the dark hands that had rocked and bathed me had left me with a burden of obligation to resist the white power that would be the ultimate gift from those who now trained me.”
The context of this, yes, powerful quote above is from a book, The Power Of One, by Bryce Courtenay. Courtenay (1933-2012) first published the book in 1989, and was afraid it would not sell. It became a best seller Courtenay was a South-African-Australian advertising director and journalist. The Power of One is based on his own life and reads like a memoir. He was born in South Africa, attended prestigious private schools, and eventually was banned from returning to South Africa, because he initiated a weekend school for black people at his high school. It is easy to see how Courtenay got that idea and why he risked his writerly reputation to write this stunning book. This book is beautifully written and complex. Following this child as he grows through what he goes through was a distinct pleasure.
* * * *
David Whyte, an Anglo-Irish poet grew up surrounded by fields, woods and the moors, is another genius in relational spirituality. His poetry is based on “the conversational nature of reality.” Whyte, 65, lives now in the United States, Pacific Northwest, where he conducts workshops for business people/corporate types, training them in “Conversational Leadership.”
I first fell in love with Whyte’s philosophy, spirituality, and poetry when I listened to his series,“Clear Mind Wild Heart,” in which he recalls his visit with David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk. Whyte complained of constant fatigue in his work life. Steindl-Rast listened. Then he said that the opposite of exhaustion is not rest but whole-heartedness. Whyte quit his job and became a poet.
MY COURAGEOUS LIFE
has gone ahead
and is looking back,
calling me on.
My courageous life
has seen everything
I have been
and everything
I have not
and has
forgiven me,
day after day.
My courageous life
still wants
my company:
wants me to
understand
my life as witness
and thus
bequeath me
the way ahead.
My courageous life
has the patience
to keep teaching me,
how to invent
my own
disappearance,
and how
once gone,
to reappear again.
My courageous life
wants to stop
being ahead of me
so that it can lie
down and rest
deep inside the body
it has been
calling on.
My courageous life
wants to be
my foundation,
showing me
day after day
even against my will
how to undo myself,
how to surpass myself,
how to laugh as I go
in the face
of danger,
how to invite
the right kind
of perilous
love,
how to find
a way
to die
of generosity.
…
My Courageous Life
A new adaption of ‘Second Life’
in Pilgrim
Poems by David Whyte
© Many Rivers Press and David Whyte
https://davidwhyte.com/.../books-cards.../products/pilgrim
…