The Unclad Soul

“Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, Poet/Author

There are secrets that are frozen In the deepest places of our soul. They cannot be unearthed, Yet they cannot be unknown. We have dreams that are lost In the recesses of our sleep. We have longings too deep to reach Across anxieties we cannot breach. There are spaces for love We hold for future opportunities. They are kept in the privacy Of our simple soulful duties. We have a heavy broken burden That we carry through the years. It’s a wistful painful memory Of our losses soaked in tears. There are questions we still can’t answer, Things we wearily want to know. But life is not an easy equation One can quickly solve and own. There are journeys alone to take And experiences with others to share. There are changes we have to make And realities we have to bear. And finally accept the mystery of things We cannot ever know. And find the hard fought truce within That if we honor lets us grow. © 2017 Timothy Moody