wellwornpath.html Home | About Movement for Beloved Community | Poetry |

THE WELL WORN PATH

by Richard Flyer

I cannot take the well worn path.

The tried and true.

Take a chance I must.

Let down my artificial barriers and opaque covers.

For I can be as others misperceive me, playing the roles and games, or, I can learn to be myself, a Human Being.

I watch and listen to the little creeper creeping, the wind whispering, and the squirrel scurrying across the vast expanse of ice and snow.

These beautiful manifestations of spirit appear before me and through me as I watch and wonder.

I learn more and gain insight by solitude and quiet than by copying my fellow travelers, travelling as we all do, imagining order existing in the human constructed chaos.

At this moment all measure of myself stand before these wondrous creatures that just be, for all eternity, while I imagine what it is like to be.

'Tis a fair question, To be or not to be?

I sit here in the cold and feel numb as the wind howls and icicles fly through the air.

How can I Be?

Where do I find the sacred Unity of the Universal Spirit while living as a human being?

What thread links me to the smallest atom, a crashing wave in the ocean, another person, or the largest galaxies?

The well worn paths are all too obvious.

Join the church, to be, some say

Join the "Capitalists" or "Communists", to be, some say,

Join huge corporations, to be, some say

Join the army, to be all you can be, some say

Join the unions, to be, some say

Join social movements, to be, some say

My God, all I want to be is truly alive, to become a Human Being.

I just want to be myself, and not an obedient, "travel the well worn path", organization man.

I want to serve, to share, to give, and to love.

How can I learn to serve groups that would have me sent out with my fellows to slaughter millions or destroy nature?

How can I learn to share myself and play mindless games of compromise, always smoothing over rough edges, never taking a stand as a man?

How can I learn to give to societies' "Big Lie", saying we are all separate, when the lie is magnified by my complicity?

How can I learn to love in a world where human beings are at constant battle with their brothers and sisters, and also at war with their natural Mother, the Earth, she who brings life?

Such are the dilemmas we face.

I will not find the answers outside of myself, in any group, cult, religion, or nation.

They do not have the answers.

Within I must travel, deeper and deeper, to explore how the inside and outside are intimately related and actually one essence.

Take time out to reflect, find solitude, and look upon the natural world.

Then, arise, and touch another as you begin to touch yourself, genuinely, with conviction.

Discover that there is no fear.

Be bold.

Go forward.

Walk into light.

See as you have never seen.

Aspire to heights never experienced, never witnessed.

Don't be satisfied.

Don't be confortable.

The deeper the search in the mine of truth and love, the richer the discovery of exquisite gems.

We must begin the world anew.

Circles and webs of light develop from dark, small at first, they join together, larger and larger they become, shining as only spirit can shine.

Can you see the light, the beauty, the perfect harmony?

Earth, heaven,and truth are inside and all around us.

Desire to see and feel this all pervasive unity, where everything has relationship to all else.

The light of spirit now spreads throughout the world, in an explosive chain reaction of moral force countering the nuclear chain reaction of physical force.

The Universal Spirit through Man, was at last becoming conscious.

Begin with a decision.

Act on what you perceive to be true.

Say no to blind obedience, to unquestioning, to cynicism .

Say yes to healing the wounds of separation and division among and within us, to affirming new possibility, to building a world based on compassion and love.

Take the first step on the not so well worn path.

Let it begin with each of us

Home | About Movement for Beloved Community | Poetry |

Please send comments to rflyer@earthlink.net