In the space where enormity collides with our smallest whims,
Man exists as creatures of his own demise,
Destined to bathe in the swill of his discontent,
Afraid of creatures he once heard exist,
Yet never has seen himself.
In the aftermath of great storms of such misery,
We exist as creatures of our own creation,
Born to both fall and rise in the shackles of our mind,
Yet dead to the truth of what could be,
A truth many have not yet been given.
Each nail in our coffin can awaken us to great imagination.
Each sound of the shovel striking sunken stone,
Awakens us to the great peril of having never lived at all.
Awaken, please, I beg of you,
Sleep will come in its own time.
Who slides with us into our great unknowns?
Other seekers, equally steeled to some great task,
Holding hands, or walking in one great Solitude,
Tongues dancing together in some great Kiss,
Lovers they are, even in their moments alone.
Those who do not understand please find shelter from the rain,
We, the Ones, must dance or drown without the shelter you seek.
We must clean ourselves in the mud and swim in the raging torrents,
We have no time, such cowardice is not our way,
Instead, we'll find our ecstasy in the things that scare you away.
Fucking to the sounds of thunder, making love under the eyes of Moon,
Laughing as we might while darkness fades away,
Leave us be to our delightful misery,
We explode to sounds of joy and challenge,
We...climax as a sacrament to our own Heaven.
I hear her coming in the autumn breeze,
In the darkest hours of the morning I speak her name,
Silent though I am, my heart shouts for its own mastery,
Awakened though I be, I grab her by the hair
And take her just as she as commanded me to be.
Forgetful though I am, my hours shrink before my eyes,
Each thankless tick of that Great Clock seems me nearing my own end,
I will not go silently, bent to the order of how I was told things would be,
Watch me, and marvel at my greatness,
Discover you are but seeing a reflection of your own.
Be joyful in the scratch marks on my flesh,
Cock swollen, she knows where I have been.
The dust on my feet will betray my deepest secret,
The blood that trickles down my back forever sings
That song she shouts when she reaches that place she fears to go.
We know what cannot be unknown,
Forgotten, perhaps in our moment of humanity,
But never unknown in the space of our Divinity,
She straddles me with such great intention,
Rides me until the Sun burns eternal in our sky.
Yes, it is forever evident in the hearts of those who dance in great unknowns,
What is not ours to share is often that which cannot be kept to ourselves.
The dilemma, it seems, is in which we cater too.
The wolf we feed,
Is the wolf that wins.
Author: Tom (Page 23 of 71)
Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.
You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".
Riddled with something, the Unseen. We label our consistencies inconsistent. We call our fears our “needs”. We succumb to the demons even before they wield a weapon, as we often have already cut ourselves before they even unsheathe their swords. The drama, the insecurity. All of those things we see as supporting the value of our existence.
Drama. The opposite of dharma even if it is just a few letters away. Like a monster’s grip on the heart, it strangles the life out of the afflicted and turns them into zombie creatures who feed on its existence. Like an enormous anchor to massive for the vessel that carries it, the ship sinks even before voyage begins. The zombies won’t drown in that sea, they will simply feed off the jetsam stuck in the ebb and flow of waves that can’t find a shoreline.
I just wish to live. In peace. In love. In the stoic way my journey has given me. I don’t want your baggage, your demons, your tireless attempts to wallow in the muck of failed patterns. I will be seen by those whose eyes have opened, and hope to remain unseen by those who still can only see tomorrow, the end, at the sacrifice of the Now. I will not sacrifice my moment to your fear, even if it means you will hate me.
To that end I regain my dreams, and promise not to burden you with them. I will walk patiently in my moment and have nothing to do with the attempts of dragging me into spaces that I have no business visiting. This is my story, and I’d kindly ask you to keep your fingers on your own keyboard.
Thus the demons, unseen as they are, laugh and slither away. They will be back, I am sure.
I hear the footsteps, and see my feet walking down an old, familiar hallway. A brightly-lit room turns sepia as I enter, the silence grows in the aftermath of my entrance. Strong I am as I cross the threshold, shortly that will be forgotten.
In the pales of own ingenuity I stumble through the doorway. Shocked, nearly blinded, the stoic nature of my heart melts in the damp air of own subconscious. Legs made strong by a long journey give way to the temptation of the moment. I am sinking.
The purpose of this arrival remains unclear, yet arrived I have. I want to shout to the demon before me that things are different this time, that I have mastered what I was sent to master. I steel myself to the battle about to happen and then the subtle, soft voice stops me in my tracks.
I know that voice. I have never forgotten it. It is as much a part of me as my own flesh, very much a weakness that turns my mind against me. Old scars seem to reopen on their own, and the echoes of stories past as my knees give way; my breath difficult to recover as my form falls to the floor.
“I am different. You do not know me,” I shout as I tumble. I wish to stand, but can find no strength in my legs. My arms give way as I try to recover, and I notice little words etched on the floor as it meets my chest with a thump. These are words I have long forgotten. These are words I have not uttered since…
…then.
Moments of suffering tumble on top of me as memories flood my heart. I can remember etching those words so very long ago, during the dark times. I can remembering uttering each of them as the pain poured from my chest. Words I cannot speak now are words I once believed. I read them, but cannot find the strength to says them. It was in my weakness that I wrote the prose, and it to that weakness that I desperately do not want to return. I wish to be awake, to end this nightmare, but sleep has a hold upon my heart.
I search for some sanctuary wondering what will be next. Her voice comes at me from every angle, and though I feel paralyzed with fear I search for her acceptance. There I will feel safe again. There I will feel loved. Words that she gave me, words that I agreed to, were words that would drive me to seek shelter within her.
When her touch finally came, my body let loose a shudder and a sigh at the same time. Sliding backwards I came to rest on her lap, my head laying nestled on her naked breasts.
“Don’t worry, I’m here,” she whispered, comforting me with gentle strokes of her hand.
“But I have changed,” came my reply. “I don’t need…” her lips silence my own, my thoughts drifting to a time when this was all I needed, all I longed for. I could feel weakness return as I sought her approval, and longed for her acceptance. I knew I would fail, as I always had, because that is what I do.
Yet I buried my head deeper in her chest. Approval never known was within my grasp. Soon, she would see me as I am, and love me just the same.
Nothing. I tried to get closer to her, murmuring a mantra of change, of strength, of rising to the heights of my own desire. Still nothing. I waiting to see what I would need to do next simply to be loved.
Nothing.
I had sunk once again to the hollows, looking for the features in my space that would remind me of what I had achieved. I had to get away from here, knowing that the great love within my heart would never be realized in the space where I had stumbled once again. I would love the voice forever, knowing that even deafness would not render it silent.
Awakened, I moved away. This time I was on my own as I found the strength to move toward the door I had fallen through before. I wanted to stay, and I could feel the stinging bite of tears flow down my cheeks as I opened the door. I may have even muttered a sob as I tried to regain my breath. All I knew is that despite my desire to get out of that room, part of me wanted to stay.
It is in the hollows of this life that I have found myself. In the weakness I discover the unrealized strength that drives me forward. In the darkness I uncover the ability to see without the light, and to miss its absence only long enough to find it again. In the dream I discover the ability to awaken regardless of how strong the gravity of that memory. It is in the words that I have etched on the rock bottom of my life that I find a mixture of truth and the lie which are, undeniably, a part of who I am.
Neither the summit nor the valley defines me. Each has left its own mark of comedy and tragedy on the pages of my life. I am not a beast until I am the whimpering pup. I am not the lion until I have first survived as a cub. I am not strong without my weakness, nor am I courageous without my fear. I have not the will, nor the ability, to honestly deny either.
I am unflappable, even as I feel the fear coursing through my mind. I fear so much. I fear losing you, missing your presence in my life. I fear infirmity, and missing out on the life I long to live. I fear harm coming to those I love, and of the pain such loss destroying my soul.
I fear losing me, and in the fear I have forcing me to some bullshit sense of security that has never worked and likely never will. I fear falling apart when I’m needed most, and in not surrendering to the calling that echoes in my heart. I fear dying when I have so much life to live, and in not meeting the potential I see as my birthright. Yes, I feel that fear coursing through me, though it will never overwhelm who I am.
Mostly, I fear the bullshit that keeps me from who I want to be.
See, I am unflappable. I have been schooled in beating back the beasts within me. I have been taught to rise above you, and to only bend my knee when my spirit demands nothing less. I have been taught to let go, and have seen the wisdom of each piece of my heart as it fell broken to the earth below. I cannot go back, and I will not give an inch of the ground I’ve nearly died to climb.
I do understand your fear. I feel it too. I just master it. I do not let it commandeer my sense of joy, nor do I allow it to rule from the throne on which I should be sitting. I would rather crawl over rocks that make my world spin than surrender to the fear of falling. I would rather feel the joy of a mission completed with the blood and bruises of a warrior then succumb to the demons who lie to me every. single. day. I honor those wounds, and the scars they create, for I have survived the day they were inflicted.
For which purpose do we stand? To worship fear as our namesake or to defeat it in the spirit of self-love and discipline? Which choice do we make when our swollen feet hit the rocky sands? Which decision asserts our authority over self, never to abdicate it for the fears of the mind?
I’ve made my choice. See me stand in the face of fear, both yours and mine. Hear me growl in the muck of adversity and laugh as I play in the mud of time. Feel me embrace the heart that I hear beat within your craziness. Know me there, and do not paint me with a brush others have given you as the vestige of those who have betrayed you.
There is so much love past the bullshit, so much joy. Find me there.
To know yourself,
Stand on a stone that once shook you to your core,
Walk on ground that once made your feet tremble,
Fear not the fall but the absence of the climb,
Know what you are here to know.
Crawl when you fall and cannot stand,
Taste the dirt and marvel at its acerbity,
Seek the absence of your normality,
If you wish to find the truth caked in mud around you.
Love the wound, yet to it have no addiction,
Savor the taste of victory, but to it have no attachment,
Crave the silence, and learn to find it in the chaos,
Seek the space that you find sacred, and defend it with your honor first.
To truly know yourself,
You must first die a horrible death,
Feel the sharp scrape of the Reaper’s talon,
Tear your weathered flesh from the bone.
You must burn in the inferno you have set ablaze,
Rise again with Satan’s horns adorned around your neck,
Owning both right and wrong like some cherished memory,
Bestowing upon no one the oaths you’ve uttered in the dark.
Adore the scars and bury no one in the muck you’ve left behind,
Yet do not carry them when they can walk themselves,
Drag them through the flames when they are unconscious,
And leave the hopeless ones behind.
Then you will know yourself,
In the outstretched arm from which you offer your heart,
In the demands of others you cast aside like toys,
In the treasures you hold dear, fitting in the palm of your hand.
You will recoil when your soul demands it,
And dance in the mosh pits when your body surrenders,
Muddy, bloody, you laugh with the demons and cry with the saints,
For you have found your freedom.
Sleep begs me to come to her. I sit in idle stillness within the darkness, tempering the steel within me and harboring no desire to find the weakness that once defined me. Ah, that stillness. That wonderful place to you can’t visit, that awesome area my soul has carved from weathered wood never to be returned to its former repose. Thus I go, rising up from my pillow, to live another dream.
I feel the fire burning within me. Like a raging beast whose form I cannot define, something growls where the silence once was. Who am I to question this Divine gift? Who am I to doubt the sanctity of the truth I feel burning through my veins? It is they who have given me doubt, and it is me who has taken that image and burned it beyond much recognition. I need nothing from you, save the memory of how far this journey has taken me.
I hear her calling again. My eyes grow heavy in her song, but there’s something I need to say. I’m not sure why. I never am. Yet like a puppet draw to the stage the strings are pulled, and I dance some scene from play my Soul demands of me. Sometimes I am the jester, sometimes I am the King. I am, however, always me. I am, forever, the writer of this story. I am, eternally, the one who sends this to the stars.
There is never any certainty in the words I write. I swear to you I am nothing but a translator, feeling something as it courses through me and onto something you can read. This will not be edited, and I will not change a thing. As it is sent, so shall it be delivered. Whatever comes of me in the sweet arms of my dreams, nothing will change what has been written. Nothing will change what will be.
Tomorrow, July 14, will be 51 years old. I remember a time when 30 seemed old. Then 40 was the age I dreaded. Now, those way-points have come and gone. I am what they call “middle-aged” I think, although I’m not sure I feel it. Sure, the joints ache a bit, and the hair looks grayer, but the spirit of youth still flows within me. 60 year olds no longer look old to me, and I often sit wondering what the next 9 years will bring. I wonder if those who have achieved that milestone wondered the same thing at my age, and what they accomplished between that moment and this one. I can only say I have so much more I want to do, and can only pray to have the time left to get it all in.
“And the young, they can lose hope cuz they can’t see beyond today, the wisdom the old can’t give away…” ~Pearl Jam, Love Boat Captain.
I am still not sure which I am, they young who can lose hope or the old who can’t give wisdom away. Sometimes I feel like a little of each, but mostly the latter. We live our lives to, hopefully, gain a bit of wisdom to share with those who could benefit from it. Usually there are no takers, and rightfully so. We all learn from the scars we inflict on ourselves, and three is no one worthy of saving us save the one we see when we look in the mirror.
Well, sleep’s call is getting much louder, and I believe it’s time to answer her call. She gets mighty upset when I ignore her, and what she offers I rarely can turn away. Time to dream. Time to fly with the eagles and rise like the wind. Time to make love under a sultry moon and whistle as the wolves howl their ancient songs. When I wake, assuming I do, I will achieved something I have never achieved in my life. I will awaken as a 51-year-old man.
Hopefully from there I’ll have 364 more new beginnings before hitting another milestone. I do plan to absorb each moment as it comes, laughing and playing my way to the grave one day. It truly is a happy birthday, spent in solitude and with those I love. I am truly blessed.
Peace.
They lay, wallowing in the discomfort from the bed they have made. Sat upon them like a stone, the weight of a weightless world crushes them, and leaves them paralyzed with the fear of their own making. Lost in a whirlwind of uncertainty, they grasp at the roots of their failure believing, somehow, that things will be different this one, final time.
They speak in swollen tongues, writhing from the desperate need to feel secure in their dysfunction. Somehow, in some way, they kneel in front of the altar built upon their failures, often teetering on the brink of something else, yet falling backwards once again onto the pathways of what they know. Regardless of the tears, despite the pain of losing yet again, they drag their inner child behind them. Or, more appropriately, it is their desperate inner child dragging them into some dark abyss which is, despite the darkness, all-too-known to the child and its puppet.
Who are the ones who light the candle in the shroud of those dark corners? Why do some choose the path of hardship that burdens the mind with a lightness of freedom, the heart with the limitless bounds of liberation? Who are those who scratch the surface of their scars just to dive beneath them? Who is it that would growl in the face of something new, and seek that newness with an energy unique to soaring Angels?
They are the Desperate Ones. Souls so desperate to live that the iron chains bestowed upon them fall to the ground. Hearts so desperate to be free that the struggle for realization is so worth the price they’ve paid to find it. These lucky few despise the cages others have wrought upon themselves, and seek the dangerous climbs that will either set them free or kill them. These hearty fucks feign no ignorance in the undertaking. They just rise, stand tall, and snarl their way to the summit.
They are as desperate for life as many are to obey the voices in their heads. The Desperate Ones are as desperate for truth of uncertainty as many are the illusions that they are safe. They are as desperate for the solitude of aloneness as many are for the false security of companionship. They care not about your feelings, your rules, your sanctuaries or your stories, they simply want to live freely without those games you’ll play to imprison them.
Desperate Ones, those stoic souls, shun their needs in order not to become a slave to them. They focus on the wounds that cause them to recoil the most, knowing the treasure the pain and the healing will uncover. They seek not to find comfort where there is none, but discomfort in the spaces that they sleep not out of some gluttony for pain, but simply because the lessons there prove invaluable. When they lay in the bosom of pleasure, of comfort, they do so in a mission of truth knowing full well that these, too, shall pass and when they do, the grief will be short and the pleasure of living magnified.
Come at them, if you will, with trepidation. The games you play will fall away like autumn leaves from an old tree. The mindset you bring will deter them not from their mission, and you will either shrink from your pedestal or rise above it. The altars you have built will either crumble to dust or lift you above the burning embers of old thought. Either way, you will know you have been there and you either seek shelter or have none of it. You will choose. That is the way of things.
Soon it will become evident that the Desperate Ones, those who strive for life, liberty and happiness are not really desperate at all. What they seek flows to them, and though you seek to block the current and belay the tide you will surely fail. What flow to them also flows through them, and when you fail in your mission to reduce them to the muck in which you wallow you will see the glory of that light. You will either stare into it or hide your eyes, and then you will see the truth of where you are.
There is as much truth in blindness as there is in perfect vision. Both the way up and the way down a mountain are equally unforgiving even if the work is different. Neither the start nor the finish are truth until you have achieved them. Remember, my soul, that when you have reached the summit of any climb you still are only halfway to your destination. You are not home until you descend, and you have not achieved your full potential until you are home. No matter how painful each step becomes you will always know where you must go.
Do so love your life, and you joy, enough to defend it with all your strength. Do not surrender to those still hiding from monsters under their bed. Shine brightly in the sky, and those who cannot handle the light will burn away while those who bask in it will flock to the beaches for just one more day. Those who hide may find their strength one day, nothing in this space is forever except the light itself, which will shine eternally in different forms and in different ways.
Find me in your breath, oh Desperate One, and feel your flesh strengthen and your heart soften with resolve. Now go, and live your truth, and surrender it to no one.
Peace.
To the one who responds when others state a need, we know the gravity that pulls us. When the siren blares, the bell rings, or the switch is pulled, we mount up and go without a thought. It is in the blood of the one who answers the call, for it is the very fiber of his existence.
For them, I wish to share a story. This is not some dramatic screenplay written by some fanciful Hollywood writer. This was real blood. This was real sweat. In the end, this was real tears.
When you see a fire truck screaming down a street, know the people mounted upon it are exuberant. Rare is it when man can follow his passion and answer his true call, but know they are. Their minds switch from men and women being humans to souls on mission for which they were born. Things happen automatically, each mind giving way to a response born by countless hours of training. Each heart steels itself to the task it has been called to do, each piece knowing its part in the puzzle. While they know the people who have called them may be in great peril, they are ready for the task ahead and prepared to give it their all to save even one life in need.
That is what happened on July 4, 2002. A raging house fire. Kids trapped. Firefighters on the scene, ready to give their all.
While the intricacies of the job are many, and the hazards faced changing by the minute, what remained steady was the heart of determination of the men and women who were there. While the sirens blared the evacuation orders, men begrudgingly surrendered hope of fully answering the call that shouted from deep within. Nothing stirs the hearts of the responder more than knowing a life hangs in the balance of effort they were born to do. Something primordial challenges them, something from outside the realm of mind and body begs them onward. Onward they will go.
Some of them who gathered on that night decided they were not ready to quit. As a group they went to the incident commander and begged for one more chance. There were kids in there. There could still be hope. One more chance, it’s all we need.
The chief gave in. Some would say he gave into their pressure. I say he surrendered to the voice inside of him, the one he shared with those under his command.
One more chance.
They went in. Eleven of them. Through the flames and falling remnants of what was once a home, they charged forward. The rage of a mission greater than self must have welled up within them. Flames nor heat nor danger of the night would stop them. Their training must have told them they were in great peril and that their situation was helpless, yet the voice convinced them that they had more time. Up they went, searching, until finally it came time to acknowledge the impossibility that anything without an air pack and gear could survive there and that even with the tools of their trade, their survival was handing by a thread.
Or a few nails driven by a hammer decades before. Sometimes the very essence of life hangs by just a few strands of aged steel. Sometimes, that steel simply cannot bear the weight.
The house came down, eleven brave souls still inside along with the three children they were hell-bent on saving. In an instance the hopes and dreams of many collapsed and floated away like red-hot embers in a summer wind. Immediately, the one soul of a brotherhood sprung to life, and what was once a futile effort to save others became a desperate effort to save itself.
Rescuers dug in, giving their all to save those trapped in the debris. Desperation invaded the space within the minds of those steeled to danger, and fatigue became irrelevant to the cause. Soon, either brave souls were saved, and three were gone to destiny.
Men die for various reasons. These three would die in service of others. They would die to set a standard for the rest of us to follow. When the chips were down and the mission seemed impossible, we simply ask for one more chance. When the flames of life become too intense and others call our name, we ask for one more chance to help them. When the structures fall and the burning ash betrays our greatest weaknesses, we stand up for one more chance. When we stumble, and fall, we rise to look the beast in our minds right in the heart and say, we have one more chance. And when our final bell rings, we hear the truth vibrate in the very song echoing in our hearts.
Take that one more chance.
I don’t write this as much as an honor to them as to give you a chance to honor them. You likely have never heard their names, and I bet they’d agree their names are not important . What is important is the that one more chance they have to inspire others to some semblance of greatness, some ideation of what makes us all wonderful potentialities. What do we do with our one more chance? What do we do to honor the greatness we were born with?
As you read their names, know that I knew them. They seemed rather ordinary in life, doing great things with the hearts they were blessed with in a brotherhood filled with extraordinarily ordinary men and women. What makes these men extraordinary is that when the opportunity came to shrink from their calling, they refused. When the order came to evacuate, they protested. When the knowledge that three young lives had even the tiniest thread of hope still there, they went back in. They used that one more chance to rise above the ordinary, and show us all what is possible.
They were awakened in the middle of the night by a calling, and they rest in an eternal answering of that call.
Deputy Chief John West
Chief Jim Sylvester
Firefighter Thomas Stewart
To feel the vibrations of Nature’s song…
The smell of Her forgotten pines,
Eternity encapsulated in the droplets of cool mists,
As water falls,
As Her sweat sprays against the rocky mounds of Her exuberance.
The soil beneath your feet never quite the same.
I’ve heard the calling of Her ecstasy,
As the song birds greet the arrival of the Sun,
As man stirs in his unconsciousness,
Distorting Her truth with the lies of his existence.
Though I falter, I hear the beckoning of Her breezes,
Tried and true I stand beside Her majesty,
Bruised, but sure to the task for which I was born,
To climb, to fall, to bleed upon Her fertile soil.
Forgotten the truest womb a babe has ever known,
The willows weeping their joy and I cry beside them,
She knows no bounds in Her acceptance,
And no judgements of misguided expectations of survival.
Hold this tired form, swaddled nicely in the torrents of despair,
Her rapids flowing beside me,
The sounds deafening me to the point where I can finally hear
That howl that rages deep inside me.
Tear away these shrouds, and leave me naked in the field somewhere,
I beg you, bleed me of the humanity bestowed on me from birth,
Rugged, let me know the steadiest of stones
As I seek my way downward once again.
There are these things that make men bleed. Like lambs stuck at the slaughter, we tremble and often fail to erupt past our woolly shell. We herd ourselves into shit-filled stalls, tremble as the nail approaches our minds, and lay surrendered on the pile of others who passed before us. We are the herders, and we wield the instruments of our destruction even as the hand nears our throats. Ah, that hand, the one that exposes us for the sheep we’ve become even in our insolence.
We, as humans being, often feign our right to power. We fight over the trivial scraps of bread left for us by tourists muddying the sands of our lives, and we wait patiently for some mystical power to hand us our birthright. How silly are those who lay spread eagle for the vultures to eat away at their flesh, their prayers unanswered by the winds of some great benefactor. If they’d only raise their hands in truthfulness, if they’d only realize the power in their hearts to end the feast of the beasts around them.
If Satan exists, it is in the ideas that men themselves are powerless in some plan not their own making. As gods of our own experience, each event offers a choice for each of us to make. Each choice is an image of the god who crafted it, each decision a responsibility of the mind that created it. Let us not blame some mystical breeze howling through the wilderness for our choices. We are the creators of our own choosing and are the mystic itself in the process of life.
I beg now to stand strong against the storm. I ask only of myself to allow the light of each moment to shine through every pore of my flesh, and every shadow in my mind. I desire that my heart not be deafened by the echoes in my mind, and that the steely grip on which I hold on to nothing continues to liberate me from the demons I once considered the truth. The wield such a sword against my own past, my own mind, has served me well thus far.
Be not still, less rigor set in. Be true to thine own heart, or so I’ve heard. Not mind, not family, not affiliation, but thine own heart. Find the resonance of the casual Universe there, and be beholden to no angel, no demon, and no collection of the hell or heaven they’ve said exists.
Most of all, love yourself in all your glory, in all the shit that runs down your spine, in all the temptation of mindless chatter that swirls all around you. You are the best that’s ever been, regardless of that voice you hear suggesting something far less than who you are. Own your greatness, you fool, before you lose the chance at that which you know to be true. You are the Sun that rises, and the lonely howl that sings praise to the full Moon above. You are the echoes and the canyons, the summits and the valleys, the muddy trails and stony, firm seats on which you rest. Now, peace, is yours to enjoy even as the storm brews around you. Sit, be still, and be the one you wish to know.