I found this image many months ago and tucked it into a blogpost draft. Yesterday, when scanning my drafts, I looked at it again and thought about clouds and about sky and about the big view, the way light illuminates and hides what is present, and about what happens when the big clouds of misfortune and sorrow roll in.

There is no way to look at these clouds and see only sorrow and misfortune. There is also depth, color, movement, light, glory.  These clouds are also scary – potent with the possibility of storm and the lightening strikes of death and dismemberment.  The sky is black, the source of the light is hidden.

Sometimes the clouds are so overwhelming that we must dive down, press ourselves against the earth, shiver there.  Jungian Marion Woodman says that to learn humility we must lay flat on the ground, feel the living pulse of the earth, to know that you are part of that pulse.

Jack Hirschman “Path” (2 of 5) – 2006 Poet Laureate of San Francisco from One Night Music on Vimeo.

Path

Go to your broken heart.

If you think you don’t have one, get one.

To get one, be sincere.

Learn sincerity of intent by letting

life enter because you’re helpless, really,

to do otherwise.

Even as you try escaping, let it take you

and tear you open

like a letter sent

like a sentence inside

you’ve waited for all your life

though you’ve committed nothing.

Let is send you up.

Let it break you, heart.

Broken-heartedness is the beginning

of all real reception.

The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.

See the gates opening.

Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,

your mouth opening like a womb

giving birth to your voice for the first time.

Go singing whirling into the glory

of being ecstatically simple.

Write the poem.

— Jack Hirschman

Thank you Polly Styron for this one.