On pondering a life well lived this week, I finally purchased Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. A beautiful little book that has been on my wish list for years.
And I am so glad I did.
Here is the opening poem from William Stafford:
ASK ME
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.I will listen to what you say.
+ William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.