April 24, 2020
Deeper Than You Think
By Amba Gale
All of us…all of us… are moving across a planetary – wide threshold. Perhaps for the first time ever, all of humanity is sharing the same crossing. Clearly, this is a time for re-set, for each of us, for the collective us, for the planet. A time for a pause, a full stop, a cocooning, if you will, where the next iteration of the whole we are to be, to become, begins to ever so slowly show itself, perhaps on the farthest horizon. While fog still masks the road ahead, many of us, if we listen deeply, may begin to look into discovering, to beginning to have the barest inkling about our shape to come.
We start, of course, by having to let go of the ground we know, the familiar ground, being transported into a world between worlds, where we may leave behind both what has become strangling for us, or deadening to us, and the familiar, which, while it may offer us a sense of safety and security, can also lead to complacency, a certain deadness in itself.
We are thrust into the unfamiliar, the unknown, the land were imagination and re-imagination reigns, and we are forced to be innovative, creative, out to discover, to re-set, to reinvent, to keep letting go of our expectations, and “how it’s supposed to look” or “supposed to be” in behalf of coming into an acceptance of what is so, and, then, creating a new vision for ourselves. As John O Donohue says, in distinguishing Threshold Crossings, “new vision” means “new pastures.”
In silence, the wisdom and deep thinking that emerges can ferry us to new lands.
Last summer, on an Island in Lake Superior that I hold dear, I entered into a discipline of Silence and contemplation, and when I did, a new possibility of poetic wandering, and actually, both insight and revelation, took hold of me, and through the guidance of my poetic Muse, (who seemed to appear out of nowhere) I found myself being led across a threshold crossing that was mine to make at the time. The Threshold included letting go of a way of being that was deadening to me, no longer useful. Many poems showed up in that space, and I offer one of them to you here. It happened, at this island, that the bridge to our front dock disappeared during the Spring Ice Melt and separated from its crib. My relationship with the bridge-less dock became a metaphor for my own journey.
(The poem is available in my new book that has just recently been published, called “Crossing Thresholds,” available for purchase elsewhere through this site.)
After I share the poem with you, I invite you to take some time over the next two weeks, at which point I promise to write again, to inquire into the questions I ask after the poems. My intention in this blog is to contribute to you at least twice a month, if not more often, to open up territory for your own reflection, for coming into your own wisdom.
Deeper Than You Think
The wade to the front dock
is deeper than you think.
You’ll have to get wet and cold.
To stand on the front dock
and celebrate the sun,
the wind,
the blue sky
and the water,
requires some sacrifice.
Leave your old life behind.
You might ask yourself some questions or inquiries – without – black and white answers – questions not to get answers, but questions to shed light on a possible opportunity.
What form of identity can you distinguish that is now deadening to you, no longer useful to you? It might have been useful to you at one time and served its purpose for a while. However, when you move through a threshold passage, and take a step into a new life, beyond a place where you have ever gone before, that stepping sometimes requires (and offers the opportunity for) you letting go.
What aspect of yourself is it time to shed, in behalf of moving onto “new pastures?”
May your reflective time be both nourishing and fruitful.
