Facing the River

Sounds True recently published a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. 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, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. The following piece is an excerpt from the book.

Facing the River

I have crossed this river before.

I almost drowned. One other time

it carried me to a new life. What now?

It’s moving so fast I can’t see myself.

Only the cries of others in the fast

water, pleading for me to come or

stay or go away. Funny how light itself

never moves but everything it touches

never stays the same. That’s been my

love affair with truth. I wonder about

so many. Where is the sweet troubled

man who used to be my friend? Did

we stop caring? Or did the current

sweep us in different directions?

Nothing stands still in the water.

Or in life. Is that why we try so hard

to hold on? I keep breaking off what is

false so the irreducible thing at center

can show itself. I wish I knew the ire-

ducible thing’s language. I know it’s

trying to tell me something. Perhaps

the same thing for years.

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a friend you’ve lost track of.