The Unclad Soul

In a magnificent poem by Stephen Dunn there are these lines: “The world thought I didn’t understand it, but I did, knew that to parse was to narrow and to narrow was to live one good way. Awash with desire I also knew a little was plenty and more than I deserved. And because I was guilty long before any verdict, my dreams unspeakable, I hunkered down and buttoned up, ready to give the world, if I had to give it anything, no more than a closed-mouth kiss.” It is that closing off to the world, to people, to ourselves, that diminishes life. The world thinks we don’t understand this, but we do. We just too often don’t admit it to ourselves. It is a scary business to live wide open, exposed, accessible, revealing our true thoughts and living by longings and knowledge, insights and beliefs and identity we own and refuse to deny or disguise. How easy it is though, how tempting, to give in to the pressure to live “hunkered down and buttoned u...

In the name of the daybreak and the eyelids of the morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs, I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace. In the name of the sun and its mirrors and the day that embraces it and the cloud veils drawn over it and the uttermost night and the male and the female and the plants bursting with seed and the crowning seasons of the firefly and the apple, I will honor all life —wherever and in whatever form it may dwell—on Earth my home, and in the mansions of the stars. ~ Diane Ackerman