Sometimes

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.

~ David Whyte ~

Coming on the heels of Monday’s post on midlife and eldering questions, Whyte’s words speak to the power of such questions. Questions which, like the white fluff of feather caught on the leafless limb of the red willow bush I met a couple of weeks ago, might easily go unnoticed. Soft and tenacious, in stark contrast to its surroundings and time of year…is why it caught my attention…had me stop to capture its moment and possibility. This is the stuff of questions that matter, that wait patiently, sometimes in obscurity, for our us to stop and notice and make something of them.

What might be some of the questions waiting patiently for you? Perhaps in the growing dark of these December days, with its invitation to go slow and look within, they may appear to you.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.