BooksBarbecue
Back Inside the Miracle Save as PDF
Chapters (103)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Dedication
  4. Upon Seeking Tu Fu as a Guide
  5. To My Reader
  6. Enduring Suffering
  7. God, Self, and Medicine
  8. Willfulness
  9. In Voices Half as Loud
  10. Tu Fu’s Reappearance
  11. Without Notice
  12. The Waiting Room
  13. Endgame
  14. Questions to Walk With
  15. A Terrible Knowledge
  16. October Storm
  17. Post-Op
  18. Setting Fires in the Rain
  19. The Decision for Therapy
  20. Questions to Walk With
  21. Ocean of Sky
  22. For My Brother
  23. Covenant with Time
  24. As Rachel Wakes
  25. Dance of the Seed
  26. A Sacred Meditation
  27. Questions to Walk With
  28. Messenger Signs
  29. Where We Are Strong
  30. As If to Say
  31. Finding a Way Out
  32. Questions to Walk With
  33. Approaching Wholeness
  34. Troubled Waters
  35. Knowing God
  36. The Garage
  37. Living with the Wound
  38. Questions to Walk With
  39. Mind Sweats
  40. First Treatment
  41. Cradlesong
  42. Lifesong with Two Trumpets
  43. Letter Home
  44. Who Will Live Your Life?
  45. Questions to Walk With
  46. Midway in Our Journey
  47. Magnificence
  48. Another Chance
  49. Nesting
  50. I Have Not Forgotten
  51. On My Way
  52. Questions to Walk With
  53. Facing the River
  54. Being Human
  55. As Moonlight
  56. In the Back of the Eye
  57. In the Sea of Others
  58. Moonglow
  59. Chores
  60. Questions to Walk With
  61. Still Here, Still Wondering
  62. Unraveling the Self
  63. Cracked or Healing
  64. For Nur
  65. Love-Sufferings
  66. Soft as Satisfaction
  67. Letting Go
  68. Inside the Miracle
  69. Questions to Walk With
  70. Sifting Truth
  71. Susan Means Lily
  72. Sitting Near a Smoke Bush
  73. Sniffing For You
  74. Forged
  75. It
  76. Surviving Has Made Me Crazy
  77. For That
  78. Questions to Walk With
  79. Flint Work
  80. Entering Our Tenth Year
  81. Coming of Age
  82. After Mira
  83. Still
  84. What Can I Do?
  85. Love Your Window
  86. Hourglass
  87. Questions to Walk With
  88. The Bridge of Well-Being
  89. Adrift
  90. The Beauty of Less
  91. Between the Wall and the Flame
  92. Eventually
  93. Thrown Back
  94. The Slow Arm of All That Matters
  95. The Thin Magic
  96. In the Sky of Heart
  97. The Sway of It All
  98. Gratitudes
  99. Notes
  100. Permissions
  101. About the Author
  102. Also by the Author
  103. About Sounds True

The pieces in this section are personal accounts of my admission of frailty, my instruction from the great teacher that is limitation, and my vow to eat from the marrow of every moment without crisis or pain pushing me to remember I’m alive. The pieces in this section are testaments to wonder and the work that releases it. Most of these pieces were written in my fifties and early sixties. In “Unraveling the Self,” I affirm how the path opened by expression leads us into meaning. In “Sifting Truth,” I struggle to understand the tension between knowing our truth and enduring rejection, disapproval, and misunderstanding. In “Flint Work,” I explore the constant need to remove the cataracts of mind that cover the pain and wonder of being alive. And in “The Bridge of Well-Being,” I honor the inevitable call to be a bridge for each other, so we can endure what we suffer and inhabit the gifts we were born with, until we can enter the days that remain with awe and wonder.

The poems in this section have the perspective of having climbed to the rim of a canyon in whose river I almost drowned. Sitting on the edge, looking back into the dangerous, life-giving river while taking in the stars, there is only amazement at being here at all and admiration for how suffering cracks us open, just in time to make us tender and ready to receive.

Whatever path you’re given, there is a bridge of well-being between us all that only the courage birthed by love can make visible. It is that bridge, always a step away, that leads us inside the miracle, which is everywhere.

Unraveling the Self

UNRAVELING THE SELF

I would not be here, if not for a miracle, if not for a series of miracles. Every day when I wake, both death and life perch over my shoulders, and I get out of bed, simply glad to be here.

In needing to survive, I’ve been forced to pare my life down to what is essential, and in doing that, I’ve been transformed, and along the way, my sense of writing and living has transformed as well. It is about these transformations that I want to speak.