Letter Home

One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness.What follows is from the latest edition of my book Inside the Miracle. I hope it will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged.

LETTER HOME

You ask if anything’s changed.
I write this in an open boat
in the middle of a lake
which has been drawing me
to its secret for months.
I am becoming more like water
by the day. The slightest brace
of wind stirs me through.
I am more alive than ever.
What does that mean?
That in the beginning
I was awakened
as if a step behind,
always catching up,
as if waking in the middle
of some race that started
before I arrived, waking
to all these frantic strangers
hurrying me on,
as if landing in the middle
of some festival not knowing
what to celebrate, as if
someone genuine and beautiful
had offered to love me
just before I could hear
and now I must find her.
You ask if anything’s changed.
I am drifting in the lake
and now it’s a matter of slowing
so I can feel everything.

You say I don’t sound the same.
It’s ’cause I think more like a fish
and only surface to eat.
I used to complain so much,
annoyed that every chore
would need to be done again,
that the grass would grow back
as soon as I’d cut it. Now
I am in awe how it will grow
no matter what you do to it.
How I need that knowledge.
You say I don’t try as much with you.
It’s ’cause you still behave
as if life is everywhere
but where you are
and I need new knowledge.

It has not all been pleasant.
One of us died the other day.
The last time I saw him,
we held hands through a park fence—
he was thin—but we held on as if
the fence weren’t there and as if
he were already on the other side.
Now we pray for him anyway, imagining
peace a lighter affair once gone
like pebbles sinking softly underwater.
I put my palm on the water’s surface
lightly, not trying to hold any of it,
just feeling it push back.
You ask and I hesitate.
It seems everything has changed
when, in fact, it is only me.

I was closed so long, I thought
opening was breaking and in rare
broken moments I’ve seen now
how your secret is my secret
just swallowed at a different time
about a different face
with a different though equally
private name that brings it back,
too keenly, too deeply.

I write this in an open boat
where yards from me the heron
perched on turtle rock is spreading
its wings in the sun, holding
perfectly open and still,
the light filling, glazing its eye.
I am drifting here, heart spreading
like a heron’s wing, more alive
than I thought possible.
You think me indifferent.
I want this for you
more than you can dream.
I am here. Drifting.
Come. Please. Swim.
If you can.

A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or a loved one, describe someone you admire for their resilience.