You Don't Have To Be Good

Mary Oliver, the poet says: “You don’t have to be good…

You don’t have to crawl on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body Love what it Loves.”

I am grateful for these words.

In order for me to get to where I want to go…I don’t have to be good.

I can start right where I am.

Flawed…

…Imperfect…

…not knowing how…

…making lots of mistakes…

What occurs when I try to be good and not make a mistake?

I get all tied up in knots.

I’m constantly judging if my next words…thoughts…or whatever I’m doing are good enough.

I second guess my own inclinations, and my spontaneous Joy walks out the door.

Who would you be if you didn’t have to be good at anything?

Would you be Free?

Does a child believe it has to be good at walking before it walks?

In David Whyte’s poem ‘Faces at Braga’ he makes the analogy of the ‘Carvers hand’ using what we call ‘flaws’, in the wood ‘to bring the deep grain of Love to the surface.”

He says: “If only we knew as the carver knew, how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core”…‘…we would smile too…’

He suggest: “when we fight with our failing we ignore the entrance to the ‘shrine’ itself.” The Shrine to our ‘True Self’

“If only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carvers hands”

“the blows” of the carvers hand is

… just whats happening…

…the good…

…the “bad”…

…just Life…

If only we could give ourselves over to Life

Life is giving us exactly what we need.

With all our flaws, ‘to bring the deep grain of Love to the surface.’

It’s simple to say, accept life with all it’s flaws…

it’s not always easy.

…Trust…

…it takes trust…

…Trusting ourselves, Myself…

…Trusting what comes forward…

…Trusting my own inclination and moving in the confidence that it is God…I mean Good……and right…and full of the gratification that can only come from the heart of one who is being fully themselves…

Trust

We each have our very own unique experiences to be had.

No one else can have it for you.

Trust:

The essence of Life

Who would you be if you trusted yourself completely?

Who would you be if you trusted life completely?

Are you separate from life?

Nature Radically Trust.

A butterfly cannot be anything other than a butterfly…

A giraffe cannot be anything other than a giraffe.

These creatures do not question it:

A giraffe doesn’t stop and think something is wrong

because its neck is too long…

A caterpillar doesn’t believe its cocoon to be a prison

before it turns into a butterfly.

Nature is innocent…

Nature cannot think itself to be different than its own pure essence.

Are you nature?

Trust

If only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carver’s hands

If only we could give ourselves to our own human nature…

…our innocence, embracing All our flaws in celebration

Saying: This is who I am. The joyful spontaneous unfolding of Ones’ Self.