True Religion

Reflections, Poem, Prompt

I used to be so sure of things. I used to know the purpose of life and exactly what happens after we die. I used to know the rules to live by (there were many)—not just for me but also for you, whether you knew it or not. The longer I live, the less I know. The longer I live, the more I value this journey of unknowing, unlearning, unbecoming.

Don’t get me wrong; I am still smug with certainty, at least some of the time. But the most beautiful and alive moments of my life unfold in spaces of uncertainty, moments of wonder, curiosity, and liminality. Brief gasps of unsmugging.

I am no longer religious in the conventional sense of that word. But over and over something swirls warm and wordless inside me. When I try to hold this wild, round aliveness and shape it into language, I often land on the words God ostensibly said to Moses: Take off your shoes. The place where you are standing is holy ground.

It seems to me that everywhere (and everyone and everything) is sacred. I feel this most clearly when I’m alone in nature. Today’s poem was initially inspired by a morning alone in the Kentucky woods. I returned to and finished it from the foothills of the Eastern Sierra.

Is there a place that feels particularly sacred to you? Is there a place where uncertainty feels more beautiful/interesting/enlivening than it does distressing/alarming/terrifying? If so, I hope you can spend time there today—or feel it as a living memory inside you.

True Religion

I went to church today, 
which is to say, 
I went to the woods. 

I walked until 
thought fell away, and I was
only this temple, 
lifting one foot and then the other,

letting them fall, all my gravity
relaxing away,
and it felt in a way
like I was a prayer,
the sighing, the song
in the falling of water and the falling of leaves,
like I was a prayer
to the falling. Aren’t we all

made of water and made of leaving?
Made to fall and made to flow
out of the void carved again and again

by our absolutes,
our pulpits,
our violent hunger
for a summit, firm and unmoving 
beneath our feet?

The Prompt

Uncertainty is so hard, so uncomfortable, and so omnipresent. Also, why does uncertainty get such a bad rap? Isn’t it also the space of greatest aliveness? The space of surprise, serendipity, awe, creativity, learning, innovation, and healing? Could there be poems without uncertainty? Could there be belly laughs? Falling in love? How much would you really enjoy a relationship (or joke or poem) that was perfectly known, perfectly steady, perfectly predictable? How much could you grow within such a relationship?

I’m pretty sure I’ve offered up uncertainty as a prompt before. If you didn’t snatch it up then (or would like to play with it again today, from the freshness of whatever perspective you find yourself in now), feel free to run with it. Sit in it. Feel it. Wonder about it. Letting it shake loose a poem or a journal entry.

But if you think that repeating prompts is bad and wrong (!!!!), then here is a new spin for you today . . .

We often think of uncertainty as a thing to fix or flee, and there’s a corresponding tendency to think of certainty as a warm, safe destination for which to aim. If you’re feeling exploratory today, then I invite you to think of a time in your life when your certainty became problematic. Is there a time when you certainty kept you stuck? A time when your certainty hurt someone else? Hurt you? Damaged a relationship? Kept you inside of a box/role/room/belief in which you didn’t belong?

What does certainty feel like in your body? Are there gradations to it? Is there a gradation or intensity at which certainty seems to be more problematic?

In your life, what is the relationship between certainty and fear? Between fear and the desire for control? Between the desire for control and your experience of the present moment?

If your certainty were to take on human or animal form in this moment, what would it look like? What would it be like to sit across from it at a table? What question might you ask of it? How might it respond? How does that response land physically in your body?

How is all of this landing in your body?

As with any prompt, go where the heat is. Follow the threads that interest or excite you. Or if you’re feeling bold, follow the threads that take you out of your comfort zone. More and more, I believe that writing can change us—whether we write a poem, a song, a journal entry, or a letter. Maybe it should change us. Maybe anything else is (excuse me) masturbatory. Maybe. I’m not certain.