The Way Of Life

A client was kind enough to send me this poem, “The Way of Life”:

The surest test if a man (or woman) be sane

Is if he (or she) accepts life whole , as it is,

Without needing by measure or touch to understand

The measureless untouchable source

Of its images,

The measureless untouchable source

Of its substances,

The source which, while it appears dark emptiness,

Brims with a quick force

Farthest away

And yet nearest at hand

From oldest time unto this day,

Charging its images with origin:

What more need I know of the origin

Than this?

                                 LAO TZU

The Chinese call this Source, Force and Way “Tao.”  It cannot be grasped, but in can be used for all manner of things; Tao can be aligned with and help us parent and live full and rich lives.  Good parenting is like water, in the way that the Tao Te Ching sees an affinity between Tao and water: nourishing without trying, preferring low places that people tend to disdain.  The gold is in the poop, the primal energy in the mundane demands that parenting presents to us–again and again.  I miss moment after moment, but maybe today I’ll get a few moments right.  Care to join me?

Namaste, Bruce