An Invitation to Mirror

I wrote this poem on an airplane after our team retreat in Morocco. I experienced many moments of transformation on that trip, especially from being in community with the Tamkeen Community Foundation for Human Development. We were all inspired and touched by the language of nia (heart intention, an intention that transcends all, resides in a place of clarity) and of makeen (a co-created space of nurturing). We experienced their process of co-reflection and mirroring our questions and how this allowed us to dissolve all barriers to language and dive into the communication of the heart and spirit. I left that week holding this question around how we dance with polarities, reaching across binaries, recognising that we are everything and everything is us. I still feel that language (especially English) will not be able to fully capture this quality, that it is somehow elusive and pervades everything.  So this poem was borne out of a desire to both honour the ineffability and the very tangible transformation that this time had on my ways of being with and in the world.

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An Invitation to Mirror

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we are both portals and mirrors
windows to where we could go
and
reflections of where we are

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smooth, honest, jagged, shattered
the truth of this mirror
dependent
on our hearts

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to mirror asks us to live in our heart
in the nia that abides in each one
residing in the makeen, expansive and gracious

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recognizing all as empty and full
the paradox of this complex life

can we hold this?

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can we come as we are and reflect from
a place of pure love?

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can we dance with the shards?

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united in deep devotion for creation
let us be both one and many
loosening our grip on the distinctions
they may dissolve
we may flourish

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our beings rest in bhakti
our mirroring is devotion
in service
of the world we long to see
of the beings we long to be