One String

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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.

For all the ways we run and work, the secret waits hiding in the open under all our busyness.

One String

I am so busy at times

trying to make it all

worthwhile, that I am

stunned at how easily the

whole of life speaks to me,

when music I’ve never heard

or a truth I never understood

plucks the one string I carry

deep within.

I only want that string pluck-

ed and yet, it stays in a place

only suffering or surrender

can open.

Still, violins in minor keys

make me swallow my fear

and herons flying into

the end of a long day

make me wish I’d led

a more peaceful life.

A Question to Walk With: What does it feel like when the one string you carry deep within is plucked and what opens you to the deeper music of life?