Angel Cards - Day 6 Transformation

When I was going through a pretty rough time in my life, I was introduced to a poet named David Whyte. I was at a point where I was really searching and seeking to find who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. It was after seminary and I really thought I'd already figured that out (and spent an awful lot of time, energy and money doing so!) A dear and wise friend gave me a book of David's poetry. I read and listened to every thing he wrote. He spoke to me at the deepest core of my being in a way that I had not felt in a long time. It was very much a timing thing. Some of the stuff I go back to read now does not even begin to move me.

But transformation is a funny thing. I'm not always aware that I'm changing. I don't feel all that different from day to day. Then, something will cause me to look back over a longer stretch of time and I realize how far I've come. Not like I've "made it" or that the journey happens in a linear fashion, but that I've learned and changed. I've become more responsible than I was when I was 25. I'm more compassionate now that I'm a pastor. I am less afraid of death than when I was younger (odd, I know). I like being with people in crisis (I guess that's good for a pastor). I know that I'm a leader, but not stereotypically so. I have become and I'm still becoming....every single day. Let me share with you from a poet's perspective, one of the places I used to be. in the "Sweet Darkness" by David Whyte:

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.