Birdwings
Posted on Jan 7th, 2009
by
Laura
Birdwings
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been waiting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes,
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
--Rumi
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been waiting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes,
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
--Rumi

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I think the opening and closing must be what it’s all about. Thank goodness our birdwings aren’t paralyzed!! Thanks for some Rumi w coffee this morning.
We can’t have one without the other, grief and joy, and just need to remember it’s what we need to stay “balanced and coordinated” as we fly through our skies… That’s a nicephoto, too.
i thank you too, Laura. Reminds me of Khalil Gibran’s “Your sorrows are the heights of your joy and your joy the depth of our sorrow”
thanks, y’all. I was in a sleepy stupor when I posted this so I am surprised it congealed at all with the image. yes, Richard, this is about paradox and I guess a sort of yin/yang thing that feels necessary to wholeness. thanks, Kathy and Mary.