The world is too dangerous for anything but the truth, and too small for anything but love. ~ William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

I’m offline (way, way offline in the 16th century!) through Monday, May 15. Regular postings will resume on May 16. Thanks!

The Wild Iris
~ Louise Glück

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

Wild Iris by Ron White

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
~ J.W. Goethe

Pretty much any spirit worker will tell you that they’ve had at least one client who simply refuses to acknowledge this saying. It usually goes something like this:

Client: I need a reading about getting a job. I’ve been looking, but haven’t found anything.

Reader: Okay, give me an idea of what you’ve been doing.

Client: I did a candle spell, and wrote the coolest poem for it! Perfectly rhymed, ABACABAC. Eighteen verses!

Reader: How much time each day do you spend looking?

Client: And then I made this really cool prosperity charm! It has a replica historic coin, and everything!

Reader: Have you had someone help you update your resume?

Client: No, but a friend of mine told me about this interesting spell he read about—

Reader: To redo your resume?

Client: No, it calls on angels to help you find a job!

Reader: So, your resume—

Client: I know about all that other stuff, like resumes, and they’re not important. It’s all about using magic to get the job!

Reader (internally): Okay, then, it’s one of those readings.

You can know all the technical details of something, but if you don’t put that knowledge to work, it doesn’t do you any good.

You can light all the candles you want, compose all the spells you want, create all the charms you want; but if you don’t actually take action to move toward your goal, it’s not going to happen. Period.

Gather information. Consider options. Make a decision. Take action.

You don’t have to have a painstakingly detailed 100-point plan in order to start. You need some kind of plan, because getting from where you are to where you want to be is not one long improvisational exercise. But you do have to take action.

Your plan will change. You will make adjustments as your circumstances change, or your time and energy and interest ebb and flow. Perhaps your goal itself changes, and then the plan is replaced by a new map to reach a new goal. But you do have to take action.

But it doesn’t matter how much or how little you plan if you don’t take action. 

You have to do something in order to achieve something.

Decide, then do. Take action.

Once again, the daily poem syncs up with today’s other posts.

Church-Monuments
~ George Herbert

While that my soul repairs to her devotion,
Here I entomb my flesh, that it betimes
May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
To which the blast of death’s incessant motion,
Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
Drives all at last, Therefore I gladly trust

My body to this school, that it may learn
To spell his elements, and find his birth
Written in dusty heraldry and lines;
Which dissolution sure doth best discern,
Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
These laugh at jet and marble put for signs,

To sever the good fellowship of dust,
And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent: that when thou shalt grow fat,

And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know,
That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.