Retrospective (Practice)

Distilling Wisdom from Experience.

This is not just a bedtime prayer.
It is a navigational act, to steer your own conscious evolution.

It is so necessary to appreciate when a conversation calls for symbolic language.

Surely now is such a moment.

You will often hear me say things like “Be present, be discerning, be intentional.”

This is what I mean—that our sense of presence can be shaped a certain way, that our understanding can be cued to listen in a less literal way that speaks to the part of us that appreciates meaning.

Intentionality refers to a posture of readiness that you can invoke, a way you can lean against the door, to widen the way through which you can reach a hand of generosity towards your future self. It is a way you can save a seat at the table for a more whole version of you, and a way you can leave a light on, so it can find its way home to you.

It is so necessary to put down your cares for a moment. Won’t they not be waiting for you tomorrow, the same as they always were?

As David Whyte says: “Stop what you are doing, and stop who you are becoming while you do it.”

It is so necessary to appreciate when a conversation calls for symbolic language.

Surely now is such a moment.

A RETROSPECTIVE
—the bedtime prayer

Another cycle all but done.
Nothing more to plant this turn, 
nothing more to sow, 
nothing more to harvest, 
nothing more to grow.

Time to let the world lie fallow.
A necessary reprieve now
from the anxious tinkering 
and fretting 
of trying to become.

A surrender to the chrysalis of sleep, 
of winter and death, 
the in between, 
where everything in the world 
closes its eyes and comes to rest, 
before some new shape 
of mind and meaning can emerge.

Let my embrace of that surrender 
be the final invitation that leads me 
toward that threshold
—a real question, 
not a riddle:

“Looking back
at the cycle that has been,
If I had my time again—
 what would I stop,
 what would I start
 and what would I keep?”

So that,
my heart may have the final say
on how I balanced the books 
of meaning and regret.

So that I can grieve what was lost,
celebrate what was good,
honour the turn for what it was, 
forgive what I need to forgive
and allow it to be both 
part of me and  behind me.

So that I can release the anchor 
of that ship and that journey, 
and that storm that carried me here.

So that,
I can notice a new star 
to follow in the sky,
raise a new sail,
and thereby signal to Life
my intention to learn 
my willingness to change
and my readiness to grow,
and my renewed devotion 
to The Great So That,
which always was
the only form of acceptance 
of the great 
and perennial 
invitation.

Step away from the page of the story of you that you are writing.

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