Benediction Poem 1: You Allowed Yourself to Keep Moving
A poem about the courage and magical mysticism tied to trusting in your own questing.
As a side-gig, passion project, attempt to lean-into-Flow, I help facilitate an unintentional spiritual menagerie called All These Branches.
Which, in plain speak translates to, I have a side-job pastoring a progressive and open-minded church community.
Sometimes I like to write what I call Benediction Poems to end out gatherings. Usually the time we spend isn’t sermon heavy but focused on having conversations around a theme, or spending an hour acting like an animal you love and speaking from its perspective, or eye-gazing with someone. I use these Benediction Poems to help frame and encapsulate an overall feeling for the morning. At their best, they don’t prescript meaning but empower it to be lived into and experienced.
The poem below is one of those Benediction Poems. I hope to share more going forward. This one was born from the good and worthy task of spiritual seeking and curiosity, but also, and in a vast sense, the goodness tied to questing and not bowing down to shoulds.
Sometimes we gotta just lean into our life, realize we have a lot to offer simply by trusting our gut, and journey forth in light of that tender and kind acknowledgment we give ourselves permission to uncynically accept.
You Allowed Yourself to Keep Moving
Do not shy away from where you are walking
when you feel
that guttural, intuitive, maple-syrup-soaked, fuzzy, ancient knowledge
that where you are walking
is good.
Do not turn the other direction
that naysayers wish you would stay.
"The effort of your imagination,"
in the words of Barry Lopez
"is to turn your boundary into a horizon."
There is no shame in your unfurling
There is no justification needed to your evolution.
You are a process
Your birthright is movement
May there be a symbiosis you find
a pairing of yours
with others
working toward the same.
Mapping together on this dark road of uncertainty
to reveal a light in the movement
An affirmation in the orientation toward discovery and possibility.
An encouragement
to what could be
rather than a clinging
to only what was.
Turning the shameful “shoulds”
into magical shires
Full with Invitation of journey ahead.
The mystery in you
is the mystery in All
that says our definition is not a static reality
but an unfolding
A journey
that longs to stretch out the very tips of its fingers
and reach beyond prescriptive limits
And eventually
tumble and fall into
The vastness
The vastness
The vastness
That knows no bounds
That is Inviting deep and easy breathing
That is embracing this fullness
that could only have happened
because you allowed yourself
to keep moving.Here is an abridged reading of the poem I shared to Instagram:
