Friends,
We are almost through our week of poetry. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to your thoughts and poetry each day, how grateful I am that you even open these emails and read my words and poetry.
Truly, thank you for being part of this community.
Today’s word is courage.
In 2018, author Brene Brown shared this on Twitter:
The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Courage is a heart word. Be brave. Love hard.
I think this is a beautiful embodiment to carry with us into Autumn.
How do we let our hearts speak, and when we silence them, how can we show up again? My poem today is a love letter to my heart, and I encourage you to think of your poem in a similar way.
There are so many books and movies out there about people finding their way back home again, about people who lost their way, stopped listening to their gut, their hearts speaking, and returned to that still, small voice.
What is the voice of your heart speaking over you today?
What does courage sound like?
Courage
My dear, dear heart, I hope you know that I am listening to whatever you need to say to me today. I hope you know that I have been working my whole life to love you, to honor your instincts and preserve your voice. I’m sorry for the days that I got it wrong, that I forgot how important your wisdom truly is in my life. So, I’m here, holding you close, listening to your still, small voice as you tenderly guide me home every time I lose my way or find that things are harder than I’d hoped they’d be. Guide me, and I’ll listen. Speak, and I’ll show up. Sing, and I’ll dance. Keep me alive, and I’ll never, ever give up.
COURAGE
.
The heart has a brain!
Did you know that?
Its own nervous system.
.
Yet my whole life I have been taught
to listen to the brain in my head.
Ongoing views, logic and thoughts.
.
Over the years though, I have come to see
the deeper coherence and wisdom of the heart.
An intimate poetry of devotion and love.
.
It takes courage to be a heretic.
To not fall in line with the status quo.
Being a dissident, freethinking from the heart.
.
Understanding it’s more about the mind
being of service and yielding to the heart.
Not the other way around.
My sweet
beating heart,
not a fist but a
flower, not a
stone but a
dancer's drum:
thank you.
*
I'm sorry that
I have not yet
learned to always
trust you:
you falter, sometimes,
or I falter, or
we falter together,
coming to terms
with a new dis-
ease.
*
But even so,
I believe you to be
strong. I know
my task is love,
and that love takes
more courage than
all the fear or
hate combined.
Your tentative beat,
then, that little
murmur-rhythm: maybe
it's making room
for something no less
sure and true:
a love that listens—
an assurance that sees
beyond itself—
a strength that
welcomes other
voices in the song.