Good morning…
After a recent morning post, one of my favorite people in the world shared with me a poem that touched me deeply. The words I love most beg a startling question: “With the presence of flaws in the grain at our core, what face will we show the world today?”
******
David Whyte’s “The Faces at Braga”
If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,
we would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.
When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.
And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.
If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carver’s hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.
Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
everyday, would gather all our flaws in celebration
to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.
******
Today we each have a choice to make: “As we grow younger toward death everyday, will our faces wear the fear of the undone, the hood of immobilizing grief, and the dry mouth of pain? Or will our faces wear life-feeding features, falling away into the true essence of all, merging into the full freedom crafted creatively by our Carver’s hand?”
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give us the Light of the knowledge of the glory and majesty of God [clearly revealed] in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6, AMP).
…Sue…
P.S. To listen to this poem read beautifully to contemplative music, please touch on this link shared by my friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uErv9GUyZU
