A Question of Reverence

Weekly wisdom to bring you home in 3 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner here in the US.

As a result, I found myself returning to David Whyte’s poem The True Love. I have carried it in my heart ever since I first read it, and I even recited it to Anastasiia moments before I asked her to marry me.

There is one image in the poem I never fully understood until recently, when I heard David Whyte share its origin in an interview.

He told a story about an older fellow who used to come down to his fishing boat in front of a marine biology station where Whyte was living at the time. Each morning, as Whyte drank his tea, he would watch this man approach his boat. Before touching a single piece of gear, the fisherman would remove his hat, press it to his chest, and say a prayer to the boat and to the waters around it.

Whyte said that for years this stayed with him as a beautiful question because he had no equivalent of that in his life.

Ever since I heard that story, I’ve been asking myself the same thing. What would be my equivalent? What would it look like to bring that kind of reverence to my work, and to what carries my work?

It reminds me that the love we share, like the love I have with Anastasiia, carries that same quiet reverence.

I hope a part of you finds that reverence this weekend, in whatever, or whomever, you love.

What in your life asks for that kind of reverence?

A POEM

“The Truelove” by David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

Grateful,

Michael