I’ve had this notebook since 2001. That’s quite a while.
I used it briefly in 2002 and again in 2003 when I wrote a list of 22 things I wanted to do before I die. It’s funny what was important to me back then.
For 20 years, it was packed away in a box or on a bookshelf.
Forgotten.
Ignored.
It resurfaced during one of my moves, and I now use it regularly.
It has notes of meetings. Notes from Hungarian lessons. Notes from retreats.
It’s quite the collection of notes on random conversations with random people in random places.
Leafing through it, looking for a blank piece of loose paper, I found a poem by Judy Sorum Brown. It’s from her book, The Sea Accepts All Rivers and Other Poems.
It’s just what I needed to read today. Maybe it’ll do something for you, too.
Trough
There is a trough in waves,
A low spot
Where horizon disappears
And only sky
And water
Are our company.And there we lose our way
Unless
We rest, knowing the wave will bring us
To its crest again.There we may drown
If we let fear
Hold us within its grip and shake us
Side to side,
And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.But if we rest there
In the trough,
Are silent,
Being with
The low part of the wave,
Keeping
Our energy and
Noticing the shape of things,
The flow,
Then time alone
Will bring us to another
Place
Where we can see
Horizon, see the land again,
Regain our sense
Of where
We are,
And where we need to swim.
Thanks to JF for the notebook – I wonder where you are and what you’re doing.
Thanks, too, to B, who gave me my copy of the poem at an Epiphany Retreat in January 2024, not knowing what a difference it would make a year later.
3 responses
Great poem Mary – well worth remembering.
A perfect and fitting poem after the emotional couple of years you’ve had. Thank you for sharing. Shelly
I’m reminded of Anouilh’s lines in Becket:
KING: Things will sort themselves out.
BECKET: Yes, Majesty, but badly.