Perhaps all beauty is in the dab of taste on the tongue. Perhaps we can’t see everything until we enter the smallest thing. Perhaps the pianist, head down, eyes closed, plays the same rumble of notes, over and over, until he falls into the canyon of emptiness from which all music comes. Perhaps, when split by a moment of love that won’t let me stay the same, I am falling into the one truth that every soul... Read more
We often live like shadows, suffering from stories never told and songs never sung. Though, even shadows vanish with enough light. And truth remains a perception revealed by time. To live a full life, we are called to participate in everything, while accepting that we control nothing. So, with nothing left to say, I explore the wonder in silence and try to net the stars with thoughts of the beginning. From The Half-Life of Angels ... Read more
We have shed many skins, always working toward some uncovered state: below opinion, below expectation, even below the exhilaration of a dream. All to accept that shedding is a way of life. Going out builds up. Going in takes off. And we go on. Despite the pain of taking off, we want the glow of being to last a bit longer. And we go on. Now I see that this is how the Universe renews itself: by build- ing up... Read more
A cramp of conscience can bring us to our knees, and a grip of pain can keep us from our true nature. Yet as one bit of color can bring the eye to the center of a painting, one bit of truth can restart the heart. From The Half-Life of Angels: Three Books of Poems by Mark Nepo April 4th is the publication date for Mark’s new book, The Half-Life of Angels: Three Books of Poems APRIL 13: A... Read more
Sometimes, when things break, life begins. It still hurts. But when the egg cracks, the chick is born. When the dam breaks, the fields finally grow. And when the heart breaks, the angels asleep for a hundred years unfurl their wings and flutter behind our eyes, letting us see everything like Adam or Eve, again. Then, miracle is not a place we long for, but a blood that brings us alive. From The Half-Life of Angels: Three Books of... Read more
It doesn’t matter how we arrive, just that we do. Tolstoy wrote thirteen drafts of the first chapter of War and Peace. He kept circling what matters like a hawk sensing something stirring underground. And having gathered 42 poets at Orchid Pavilion, Wang Xizhi floated cups of wine downstream and those who lifted the cups had to compose a poem or drink the wine. At the end of this day in 353 AD, 37 poems had been retrieved and... Read more
A weary soul kneels by the river, plunging his hands in despair. Miles away, another kneels to wash her sorrows. Without ever knowing, they give to each other, the way electricity illumines two bulbs that think they are the only light. Love works this way: a river that helps each other rise, a charge that makes each other glow. The web of kinship is as vast as the cries of constellations across the dark. And the dreams... Read more
My good friend, Rich Frankel, is a pioneer in relationship-centered care who works with medical students at Indiana University Medical School, and with physicians and clinicians at the Cleveland Clinic. Rich told me this story: “Reza is a Lebanese youth who came to America. He is now becoming a doctor. I met him after a long night of tending patients in an emergency room. As a resident, his face was tired but his eyes were burning strong. We fell into... Read more
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German pastor and theologian caught in the maelstrom that was Nazi Germany. After receiving his doctor of theology degree from Berlin University in 1927, Bonhoeffer served as a Protestant minister to two German-speaking congregations in London. Upon his return to Berlin, he was troubled by what he saw happening in Germany, and said in a public talk in 1933, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we... Read more
If your voice breaks, I’ll be a cup. If your heart sweats, I’ll be a pillow on which you’ll chance to dream that weeping is singing through an instrument that’s hard to reach, though it lands us like lightning in the grasp of each other where giving is a mirror of all we cannot teach. —MN Facing what is difficult is one thing, but living with the wound, in ourselves and in others, means tending to someone you love... Read more
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