Charmed Lives

I paused briefly when I came across this one line in a New Year note received from a former colleague-- "You live a charmed life."

But don't we all live charmed lives, if by charms we mean those amulets with which we arm ourselves-- whether they are like this Ghao or Tibetan prayer box (brought back upon return from a Peace Corps stint twelve or so years ago by my grad school friend Jane); or simply the prayers and supplications we whisper silently as we move from the unknowables of one day to the next?

There is so much we cannot master (or mistress), despite the mundanity of everyday life.

What I hope for is patience when the path is full of stones; and at the same time the ability to flow like water, seeking a way to the source.

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Here is yesterday's poem-response to the post on The Morning Porch; the poem now appears on Via Negativa.

A few days ago, a Korean buddhist nun linked another poem from Via Negativa to her blog From This Shore, where she records the lives of buddhist nuns at her temple. Some lines in yesterday's poem pay homage to this image on her blog, of nuns' shoes by the doorway.