I wake these days with a sense of gratitude for the simple realities of my life. Today it was so very still when I went out for my morning walk to greet the rising sun. The air was filled with springtime moisture as the warm temperatures of the last two days have melted snow and invited the bluebirds to return early. Things are changing and things stay the same. In the midst of it all, my heart keeps beating and I wake up to greet a new day.
In the midst of the rising and falling of intensities around the world, may you find yourself filled with the simple beauty of the moment…find the time to stand still…find the place of Silence within, where your heart beat connects with the heart beat of the cosmos.
I, the pursued, who madly ran, Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
With love and blessing to you all,
Peri and Barbara
Now I Become Myself
by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It's taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people's faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly old, crying a warning, "Hurry, you will be dead before--" (What? Before you reach the morning? Or the end of the poem is clear? Or love safe in the walled city?) Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own weight and density! The black shadow on the paper Is my hand; the shadow of a word As thought shapes the shaper Falls heavy on the page, is heard. All fuses now, falls into place From wish to action, word to silence, My work, my love, my time, my face Gathered into one intense Gesture of growing like a plant. As slowly as the ripening fruit Fertile, detached, and always spent, Falls but does not exhaust the root, So all the poem is, can give, Grows in me to become the song, Made so and rooted by love. Now there is time and Time is young. O, in this single hour I live All of myself and do not move. I, the pursued, who madly ran, Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
"Now I Become Myself" by May Sarton,
from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton, 1993.
Reprinted with permission.
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