Adrift…

A reflection on beauty and sadness.

I feel called to write to you today to share with you a poem that has touched my soul and brings me great comfort.

And I wonder if it will touch you too?

It’s not one of my own poems!

It’s written by the spiritual poet Mark Nepo and I first came across it through the work of Nici Harrison of The Grief Space.

It’s called Adrift.

And I find it to be a tender meditation on sadness, beauty and the bittersweet longings of the human heart…

I invite you to take a few breaths to clear your mind and settle your body … and read (and perhaps re-read) these words at a slow pace to let the words and imagery sink in…

Adrift by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief. The light spraying

through the lace of the fern is as delicate

as the fibers of memory forming their web

around the knot in my throat. The breeze

makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh

of the next stranger. In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

…

…

…

How did that land with you, dear heart?

…

Take a breath, if you’d like to, and notice…

…

There are numerous beautiful images there aren’t there?

But do you know what touches me most and sends a shiver of recognition and tender longing through my body?

It’s the hope in the last line: I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

And how it contrasts with the melancholy of the opening line: Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

For, despite the personal challenges and griefs we may be experiencing, and despite the violence we see in the world around us being meted out to fellow humans and to nature … there is still so much beauty in this world. There is still beauty in the human heart.

Can you too feel the holiness within each moment? Within each experience? A numinous mystery at the heart of all of life that none of us truly understands but perhaps some of us feel more strongly than others?

A poignant combination of longing and sorrow and a piercing joy at the beauty of this world and the cosmos and all it holds.

Holding the tension between these experiences of sadness and beauty seems to me to go to the very heart of being human.

Being with both and forgetting neither.

*

So, until next time, may you feel the presence of beauty and may it both ground and uplift you, and fill your heart.

With love & blessings,
Stella ✨