Not Good Enough

I’m not here to explain. By rights, I should have hit the Publish button after I typed in the period following “explain.” Nothing more is needed. But I always believed I needed watertight answers and too many words. It was the only way I could ever hope to be enough.

Thoughts are racing through my mind, though, and inspiration pokes me here and there like acupuncture needles, sending signals through my body and waking up parts of myself, parts of my Soul, that need expression.

Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds is accurately titled.

The first poem in the book is by Fernando Pessoa, a man who—I imagine—felt so not good enough that he created multiple writing personalities (approximately 75), gave them names, then created and published works by them: in styles and on subjects unique to each. What are these particular words? A pep talk? Some self coaching? I imagine it is, for we all seem to need it.

To be great, be whole: don’t exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.

William Blake is up next in the book. Dear Blake: talk about a misunderstood man. Christians want to claim him, but only when he behaves himself. Here’s the thing, though: artists are not supposed to behave themselves! Artists speak directly with God, even if only for a moment here and another there. And if we have any integrity whatsoever, we’ll drop our preconceived notions, anything we think we KNOW and actively listen, making room in our own souls for the art to change us.

Auguries of Innocence
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Every morning, I sit in my Reading Nest, where I read and read and read, sometimes from as many as a dozen books. When I am good to myself, I write. When I love myself enough, when I trust myself enough, when I approve of myself, and believe that I deserve all good, I let my own words out. Most often, they are created in response to what someone else has shared, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact (oh, how I hate the word “fact”), it’s how it is supposed to be. Unlike God, we cannot create from nothing. We use what’s already inside of us, and towards that end I keep imbibing as much as I can. And I want it all: give me the poetry; the art; the words of God recorded by any Tom, Dick, Harry, or Susie in the books of any religion, philosophy, tradition, culture, or psychology; the music; and most of all, the Stories. Give me all the Stories. I want a share in the experience of others, and I want to understand. I don’t want to know. I want to understand. There is a difference.

So, I began with my own words and I will end with my own words, damnit: a little poem written up yesterday and added to today, after I took in Pessoa’s verse and what he might have been feeling when he wrote it (along with everything else that has been poured into my Soul):

The Moon, the whole Moon,
Shines for me,
Shines for you.

She is Stella Maris,
a mother unconcerned with the mind’s minutiae:
Moon or Stars, what does it matter?
She is pure Mother Love.

Seeing your Soul
—your perfect, beautiful Soul—
huddled and desperate in a floundering boat,
she lays down a trail of light
and gets you home through the darkness.