December 2006, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com
Inspiration for the New Year
I want to wish all my readers, colleagues, and friends on this newsletter list a very wonderful and inspired New Year. Poetry has always been a source of inspiration for me, and so when I give live presentations, I always weave in poems. Here are two poems that are among my favorites.
The first one, by poet Michael Blumenthal, celebrates the drive we all have for change and reinvention. It uses the ancient story of the Odyssey as a metaphor for our own life’s journey.
The second one is a few stanzas from a long poem by W. S. Merwin. It speaks to the way many of us feel, faced with an ongoing war and many difficult global challenges, but also having a need to continue to live life with gratitude and love and happiness.
Inspiration for the New Year
I want to wish all my readers, colleagues, and friends on this newsletter list a very wonderful and inspired New Year. Poetry has always been a source of inspiration for me, and so when I give live presentations, I always weave in poems. Here are two poems that are among my favorites.
The first one, by poet Michael Blumenthal, celebrates the drive we all have for change and reinvention. It uses the ancient story of the Odyssey as a metaphor for our own life’s journey.
The second one is a few stanzas from a long poem by W. S. Merwin. It speaks to the way many of us feel, faced with an ongoing war and many difficult global challenges, but also having a need to continue to live life with gratitude and love and happiness.
"A New Story of Your Life"
by Michael Blumenthal
Say you finally invented a new story
of your life. It is not the story of your defeat
or of your impotence and powerlessness
before the large forces of wind and accident.
It is not the sad story of your mother's death
or of your abandoned childhood. It is not,
even, a story that will win you the deep
initial sympathies of the benevolent goddesses
or the care of the generous, but it is a story
that requires of you a large thrust
into the difficult life, a sense of plenitude
entirely your own. Whatever the story is,
it goes as it goes, and there are vicissitudes
in it, gardens that need to be planted,
skills sown, the long hard labors
of prose and enduring love. Deep down
in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing
all of your life, where no Calypso holds you
against your own willfulness,
where you can rise
from the bleak island of your old story
and tread your way home.
________________________________________
"Listen"
by W.S. Merwin
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
________________________________________
I want to say thank you to everyone this year. I appreciate your support, feedback, hard work, and your good hearts. I hope it has been a year filled with both challenges as well as great joys, and that next year all difficulties evolve into opportunities so that you get even closer to achieving your heart's desire.
I plan to be doing much more writing, coaching, and presenting in 2007 and am so glad to have you as a part of my community!
