Ahyo-oh’-oh-ni

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This fall, Sounds True is publishing a box set of teaching conversations based on the poems in my book Reduced to Joy. The poems are the teachers and unfold the journey from our head to our heart. For the next two months, I’m happy to be previewing poems and reflections from the box set.

With so many things blocking us from what matters, how do we develop a practice of return when we become confused? This poem explores the question.

Ahyo-oh’-oh-ni

—from the Diné, to bring one

into harmony with everything.

When I open my tiny self,

I can almost hear the wood

growing inside the tree

and the love growing

inside your heart.

I can’t hear it for long,

for my own creaking

takes over.

But there is this rhythm

of how things grow that

we are privy to from

time to time.

Don’t give up

because your pain

sometimes drowns

out the Source.

A Question to Walk With: Describe a current tension you are feeling between a pain or anxiety you are working with and your connection to a larger sense of things.