Repeatedly We Are Asked

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As human beings, we are asked to choose, more than once, if we are striving for perfection or fullness. While excellence is an admirable and useful reward for our effort in the world, our immersion of heart into whatever we are doing leads us past excellence into the experience of Oneness. This is a hard insight to open. This poem tries.

REPEATEDLY WE ARE ASKED

to embody or consume;

to be in kinship with everything larger

or to order and manage everything smaller.

We are asked, every day, to align or separate;

to coordinate our will with everything living

or to impose our will on everything we meet.

And not choosing is a choice. Acquiescence

is different from patience or surrender.

All this leaves us needing to know:

whether to better the song through practice

or to better ourselves through singing.

A Question to Walk With: Describe something you are practicing in your life and explore in what ways this practice is making you more skillful and in what ways your immersion of effort is making you more yourself.