April 10

Sometimes, I'm just not up to snuff. I feel down. I feel stuck. It feels dark, muddy, foggy, and/or stressful. What to do? In the past I've tried napping, drinking, eating, watching tv, and other things to take my mind off my troubling feelings. But what if I just tried being with my feelings? I'm learning to accept that the emotional pendulum swings and I can be okay at either end of the spectrum. Often, staying with the upset lets me understand myself more fully and gain insights that I wouldn't have gotten any other way.

Today, accept where you are. Be open to the understanding that comes from being in the dark for awhile.

In a Dark Time

[by Theodore Roethke]

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstances? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.