I am currently reading The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. It had been on my to-read list for a while so I finally requested it from the library. The book is pure poetry, full of truth + beauty + wisdom.

Like this, the entry for February 19, Instead of Breaking.

“With the precise tools of modern medicine, unborn children who are malforming or experiencing obstructions can now be operated on in utero. Profoundly, these state-of-the-art techniques reveal a deep timeless truth about growth and healing. For just as amazing as the fact of these operations, is the fact that these surgeries leave no scars once the infant is born.

What this tells us is that if we tend to things at the deepest level, our repair will be so much a part of who we are that there will be no scar. It is easier to bend underneath the surface in the deep timeless fluid of the beginning, than to break once fully grown.

But it is too late for me, you might say, I am already full-grown. Not so, for in the world of our inwardness, we are always growing and are blessed to carry that fluid beginning within us. It is never really out of reach.

We can return and begin again by facing ourselves. In this way, we can go below our hardened ways to the soft impulses that birth them. Instead of breaking the bone of our stubbornness, we can nourish the marrow of our feeling unheard. Instead of breaking the bone of our fear, we can cleanse the blood of our feeling unsafe. Instead of counting the scars from being hurt in the world, we can find and re-kiss the very spot in our soul where we began to withhold our trust.”

That last paragraph! I keep reading it. It feels like a sweet sweet kiss. Also, it reminds me of moments of healing – when something that seems like an insurmountable problem falls away in an instant, leaving me filled with wonder.

If you read The Book of Awakening (past), or read it (present-future), do share what entries speak to you, please! I’d love to hear. I am bookmarking every entry that speaks to me, which basically means that I am bookmarking almost all of them. Clearly I need my very own copy.