Want the Change…
“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”
—Nathaniel Branden
As I headed outside this morning for my walk, I was surprised at how dark it was. Another sign of change that I hope soon brings cooler temperatures our way in Central Texas.
Change has been on my mind since sharing Rainer Marie Rilke’s poem Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII with our Quiet Pause community last week.
“Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.”
The wisdom offered in the first two lines of the poem is easy to follow when it’s a change we’ve instigated or when nature is heralding a time of relief from intense weather. But how do we shift to “wanting the change” when an unexpected or traumatic event occurs?
“Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.”
Perhaps this third stanza of the poem offers a clue, inviting us to surrender like flowing water to what is and open without resistance to where this change is taking us. We don’t have to approve. We don’t have to like it. But if we do our best to let go as we grieve or rail at the unfairness of what’s in front of us, we might slowly notice the seeds of new beginnings planted at the time of these endings.
What changes have you been resisting or avoiding? How might you begin to accept the need for and flow with those changes? As you ponder the changes occurring in your life, I invite you to “pour yourself like a fountain” and imagine the wisdom you need to support you flowing to you.
May you be kind to yourself in the midst of change and may you seek and find the signs of new growth these changes can bring.
A Different Change
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
―Rumi
Out of the Storm
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about..”
―Haruki Murakami
Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne,
becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
——Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy), from Sonnets to Orpheus.
Note: If you’ve forgotten your Greek mythology, Daphne was a nymph being pursued by Apollo. She asked the river god, Peneus, to free her from Apollo. He turned Daphne into a laurel tree, and Apollo used his powers to make the leaves of the laurel evergreen.
