the most courageous work

 

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Over these writings I bent my head.

Now you are considering them. If you

turn away I will look up: a bridge

that was there will be gone.

For the rest of your life I will stand here,

reaching across.

If these writings can bring a turn
or an echo that touches you - maybe
a face, a slant, a tune - you will stop
too and bend over them. When you
look up, your thought will reach
wherever I am.

I know it is strange. and there is no measure
for this. The only connection we make
is like a twinge when sometimes they change
the beat in music, and we sprawl with it
and hear another world for a minute
that is almost there.

—William Stafford
Sending These Messages

 

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Open the letter of the body’s life.

Inside the words, this body, your life, is a letter

to the king of the universe.

Go to a private place and open it and read to see if 

the words are right. If they

are not, start another! And do not think it is easy to open

the body and read the secret

message. This is the most courageous work, not something

for children playing with knucklebones 

in the dirt. Open to

the title page. Is what it says there the same as what you

have said it says? If

you are carrying a heavy sack, empty out the stones! Bring

only what should be given.

—Rumi

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Pardon all runners,

All speechless, alien winds,

All mad waters.

Pardon their impulses,

Their wild attitudes,

Their young flights, their reticence.

When a message has no clothes on

How can it be spoken.

—Thomas Merton
A Messenger from the Horizon, excerpt

 

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