For Our Anniversay: THE TRUELOVE

 For Ron

My husband and I were camping on Lopez Island in the San Juans on September 14th, our 4th wedding anniversary. When I saw this beautiful poem by David Whyte, I was struck with awareness of my heart brimming over with love and gratitude for Ron. And also my deep inner bow of gratitude for the long and winding and often turbulent journey that led me to this place of opening my heart to an ever deepening capacity to give love, to receive love, to be love. May we all embrace the courage and messiness and persistence that is asked of us to heal and open our hearts. May we continue to deepen our capacity to be the loving presence in the world that is so deeply needed, both within our intimate relationships and in relation with all of life. — Molly
"The ideal, and sometimes, the gifted, undeserved, and actual, actuality of finally finding our Truelove. An intuition and a possibility that lives deep in the human heart, whether we find them or no. What is desired in a Truelove mirrors and magnifies our wish to find a true home in the world, with another, with a work and ultimately with our own sense of self. To walk across impossible waters together and to love and be loved as the ultimate sense of arrival." — David Whyte

THE TRUELOVE

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours.

Especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step
out of the boat
toward them,
we find
everything holds
us, and everything
confirms our courage,
and if you wanted
to drown you could,

but you don't
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you don't want to any more
you've simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live
and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

 — David Whyte

…

THE TRUELOVE
From ‘The Sea In You’
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press