Life is a dance between form and space, visible and unseen, the obvious and the mysterious. If you want to be full of wonder today, read this poem. It's about the mystery of life and all the grace that can be found there.

“If you don’t become speechless when looking out into space on a clear night, you are not really looking, not aware of the totality of what is there. You are probably only looking at the objects and perhaps seeking to name them.” – Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Words can only point to the truth, and to the mystery... but it's still fun to contemplate the questions, even if you don't have the answers. Even if you'll never have the answers.

Let this poem remind you... to hold everything in the open space of your heart. To let go of needing to know, and to feel life breathing *you* instead.

Be still enough inside, enough so you know more than logic or reason could ever know.

"The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." – Neil deGrasse Tyson 

An Ode to the Immeasurable Mystery of Life

To move through the world transparently—

Wouldn’t that just be nice?

To not pin things down

And tie them up,

Wouldn’t it be a relief—

To not have to identify

With everything,

And sometimes even anything?

I’d like to just live in the world,

Just for a glimpse,

Without needing to be

Of the world,

Without a label or a word

For everything.

Are the dead

More alive

Than the living?

I wonder if we should

Stop wondering about everything.

If I think a little less,

Or a little more,

Does it change who I am,

Really, at the core?

What’s underneath

Is underneath,

No matter what I throw

On top of it.

Maybe if I stop describing it,

I can start living it.

Maybe life will start living me.

When I stop trying to close in on

My self,

Trying to nail down the truth,

And open up to the

Incomprehensible mystery,

I can join the truth.

Am I so hypnotized

By what happens

That I’ve forgotten

A vital half, missing?

No.

Not aligned with a greater reality,

Simply needing to look

Through my eyes

Instead of with them.

I feel the guidance to

Hold the truth

That I’m living and dying

All at the same time.

It’s a paradox,

Complexity,

Whole and wondrous

In its own right.

If we look out

Into the vast night,

There’s more than what is seen:

There’s the unseen,

The unheard,

The unfathomable half,

Without which

There would be no path

For the stars to align

Into portraits painted

Across the sky—

Nothing for us to

Place words upon,

And nothing for the eye.

To think that I am only

What I think

Would be a lie.

Even space

Would like to look at itself

Without being called a sky.

“Just look,”

It might whisper,

“Without needing to know,

You will know.”

Perhaps if I looked through my eyes

And not with them,

I’d be looking at myself,

Wherever it is I go.

That’s the paradox,

The complexity,

Of understanding that the soul

Doesn’t need to know,

In order to know.

Only in stillness

Am I present inside

This great mystery.

. . .

Tell me:

Which part of this poem is your favorite?

Tell me in the comments. I read every single one, and I'd love to know!

When you’re in awe, you know you’re in the right place.

With love,

Jen

P.S. Want more wonder and less worry? Go visit my shop for prints of handwritten poems and other words of hope and heart. If you forget what matters or how much of a gift it is to be here at all, you’ll have something to remind you.