The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache
for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your life’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have been shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without needing to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own.
If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to
remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can
bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if
you can be faithless and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and
if you can source your life from it’s presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on
the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes!".
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want
to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and
bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if
you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to
know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,

and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
(a native Indian Elder)

The Journey

One day you finally knew what you had to do
and began, though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice--though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"each voice cried
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
to do the only thing you could do--determined to save the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.


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