The vessel.
You are more than what you know about yourself.
You are less of yourself than you believe yourself to be.
You are more than a ripple on the water that reveals the wind.
You are less than the solidity in the sediment that structures a rock.
You are more than the echo in an empty chamber.
You are less than the thickness of an instrument at rest.
You have a gift,
But you are not the gift.
You have a song,
And you are only the singer.
You may feel full,
Yet you are the one who contains the fullness.
You may feel big,
Yet you are the one who opens to embrace it all.
When we remember who we are,
We expand.
When we forget,
All that we thought we were crumbles with our incapacity to hold it.
We grow ourselves when we give ourselves away,
When we forget ourselves and thus find our way.
We shrink ourselves when we grab on too tightly,
Trying to own it,
Trying to make it stay.
Like light,
You are fierce,
Cutting through what no longer serves with the blade of truth.
Like dark,
You are quiet,
Containing every sweet mystery and offering imagination a dance.
You are not who you think you are,
Nor who you dreamed you would become.
You are not who they think you are,
Nor what they wished for you,
Nor whom they believe you to be.
You are everything in that your spaciousness knows no bounds,
And you are nothing in that your surrender is what allows it all.
We bow in beautiful reverence to that which gives us life.
We bow to the source that wants to come through us.
We kneel with a generous humility to accept the messages,
Words,
And silence that wants to speak itself through our hands,
Our eyes,
Our lips,
And our hearts.
We turn on bended knee to pour these gifts as offerings,
Spilling from souls who know that their duty,
Their mission,
Their life is more than can be counted on fingers or measured with a cup.
When we block this flow,
We falter.
When we stand against the current within,
We topple over.
When we wait for tomorrow,
Something dies.
When we think it's hours to give,
We are lost.
When we think it's hours to lose,
It ended before it began.
We are the channel,
Not the channeled.
We are the vessel,
Not its cargo.
We are the container,
Not the water.
We are the conduit,
Not the force.
What gifts you have reside in your willingness to carry them.
Who you are and who you become are beacons.
You are beckoned by what you transmit.
You are shaped by how much you can empty yourself of yourself.
You are illuminated by how much you give yourself to the light.
When the day is done,
In our dreams we delight in being carried.
The ones who carry life.
The ones who live to unfold the unknown in a smile.
