Welcome Home
My home is made of peace.
My heart is made of patience.
My soul is made of pondering.
My home is a refuge of kindness that no one can
disrupt.
I am there whenever I am curious.
I am there whenever I am creative.
I am there whenever I am attentive.
Yes, you can enter.
As long as you remember:
My heart is made of patience.
My soul is made of pondering.
-Kathryn Harper
I want to encourage you. Although you feel stuck in your overgrown forest, perplexed about how to change it, overwhelmed and frustrated with yourself that more progress has not happened, you are changing. You are noticing, you are learning, and those alone are evidence of change.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
A Request
Amorevita, you have been the sturdy taproot of my life.
You have been the woven net I long to trust in the world.
And now I ask you to scatter me.
I ask you to be the farmer that sows and winnows me across the fields of my life.
Do not forget me now.
Come to me as a river of courage, a rhythmic surf.
Ignite me like the brilliant beam of the lighthouse.-Kathryn Harper
Crucifixion
She wills him to leave.
He shred her with words and now
she is every slut who ever lived,
the Levite’s worthless concubine from Bethlehem
as she stands scrubbing under
stinging, steaming needles of water,
as she cooks him out from under
her flesh, now banana tender,
welting purple at the wrists, breasts, thighs.
He permeates her head, the
musky mushroom scent stubbornly
remains regardless how much
she retches and spits;
she bites the bar of soap as though
taking communion, seeking its promise
to trade cleanliness for evil.
She stands, trembling and heaving
from gut to fingertips
shaking bone deep cold,
and the blood,
the blood won’t stop,
evidence of a sacrifice
that was not his
to make.-Kathryn Harper
If you ever get a chance to watch this quirky movie, you won't regret it. That is, if you enjoy movies about love, connection, grief, joy, and wonder.
As a therapist, this reads true. It's not a script. For me, the poem evokes the essence of being a therapist, meeting whatever the client brings, staying present and authentic. Of course therapy also involves deeper responses, examinations of beliefs and thought patterns, skill practice.
Click to enlarge for better reading.
Am I allowed to take up space? Am I allowed to ask for your attention? Am I welcome here? May I relax and put my attention to other things?
