TESTED BY THE TEACHING OF CIRCUMSTANCE

© 2011 Howard McQueen

For so many years

 in a self-imposed isolation

 I’ve been going it alone

I’ve tried staying stoned

 spent many years as a work-a-haulic

 stressed and regressed

 in my self-centeredness.

And then, my hyperbolic journey as a comet

 is captured in the gravity of the father sun.

What is left of me plummets towards home.

Surprisingly, the booster fuel of anger

 is tapped and re-routed into opening my heart:

-         finding and nourishing connections

-         allowing my fear to speak

-         uncovering others courageous enough

       to bump up against my armored bruises

 and I have held on

  to uncover a love so grand

  so very humbling,

  that the blindness now receeds.

As I now feel my way home,

  -  I am stripped of my stories of unique victimhood

  -  Stripped of my innocence and guilt from passing along

      hand-me-down aggressions.

In discovering our humanity, we will continue

  to panic and drown in our circumstances

  until we realize,

  each and every set of circumstances is our teacher,

  offering not suffering

  but the opportunity to awaken

  from our unnecessary suffering,

  and bring forth the embodiment of living courageously,

  knowing we will put it all on-the-line

  for the love far greater than self.