Start Close In
Start with the ground you know
This poem was inspired by the first lines of Dante’s Comedia written in the midst of the despair of exile from his beloved Florence. It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to make home in the world again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again, into what looks now like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world has to be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground but from the very center of our being. The temptation is to take the second or third step, not the first, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, into our grief, to attempt to finesse the grief and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited.
Start Close In
Start close in, don't take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don't want to take. Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way to begin the conversation. Start with your own question, give up on other people's questions, don't let them smother something simple. To hear another's voice, follow your own voice, wait until that voice becomes an intimate private ear that can really listen to another. Start right now take a small step you can call your own don't follow someone else's heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don't mistake that other for your own. Start close in, don't take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don't want to take. -from David Whyte: Essentials
Thank you!
Love is the first step (the step you don’t want to take as David White says)—not the second or the third path of imitation. Therefore, love doesn’t resemble anything you have already seen. It is the origin point, which is, strangely enough, not a mere nothing (as the modern would have you believe).
Although it does involve a journey through darkness, how could it be any other way? Without the dark as contrast, how could there be the sun of love? For even the dark is dependent on Love, as all things are. All things depend on that first step (let there be light).
Strangely, we need that duality to show us the non-dual. We need difference and distinction for love-making to happen. We need sparks of polarity. A step forward to truth will cause the dance partner to take a step back, which is a prelude to intimacy.
The first step is to put a pen on the paper, which says ‘I love you’. Not where or what or how. Not a definition or a description. Just the naked fact that we love. Everything else follows from that.
The cynical, the cool, the ironic—refuses to admit that. Never mind, it will fall eventually. And even its postures are part of loves game, loves feathers. But only the truly earnest will take that first step, often caused by pain and disorientation.
Don’t even try. Just take the first step. It is the ego that keeps holding you back. Stab it in the heart, and then take the first step. You need this. You want this. There is nowhere else to go.
The first step isn’t even a step, it is just your destiny. The history of human folly is just the history of thwarting destiny. There is always something to distract you from that first step. But with each distraction, a new karmic knot is created, and more effort is needed.
Was the real sin eating the apple. I question that. Eating the apple was destiny—the first step out of the garden is the first step of adventure. To think otherwise is an insult to the human story, which is that we must move away from childish notions of God to find God again—or rather, we must move away from childhood.
That is love—a step towards growth. For most of us, this is no simple matter, as mired as we are in the reactions, the demands, and the pull backwards into the womb. But growth and evolution demand of us: love or sleep. That is: meet the demand or remain mired in childish things.
Does love mean a land of milk and honey. Not at first. In fact, it means facing the pain, the pain of birth, the pain of loss, the pain of dissociation, the pain of separation. Love isn’t getting what we want; it often means the opposite. That everything is taken away—that door to the dark wood. We can only Love when we have truly imbibed the opposite.
That is, we have gone to the underworld and faced that caricature head-on.
I have read aloud this piece. I take the liberty of spreading your grounded wisdom when ever I can.
Grounded Wisdom is like fertilizer, it helps almost anything to grow.
My retired life has become all poetry, yours, L Cohen and mine, for now. When ever I can capture a small group of folks attention, I tell them I would like to introduce a friend and poet to them. And I read one of your pieces.
But this one and the line from Dante still resonates like an aria. One can’t hear it enough.
And in a different book I came across a number of poems that jolted my attention: « This has to be about John O’Donahue «Â
80 speaks like 21 does. It’s a life changer.
Thanks for being here an I hope Substack works for you.
Al Dussault