Ahyo-oh'-oh-ni

This fall, Sounds True is publishing a box set of teaching conversations based on the poems in my book Reduced to Joy. The poems are the teachers and unfold the journey from our head to our heart. For the next two months, I'm happy to be previewing poems and reflections from the box set.

With so many things blocking us from what matters, how do we develop a practice of return when we become confused? This poem explores the question.

Ahyo-oh'-oh-ni

--from the Diné, to bring one
into harmony with everything.

When I open my tiny self,
I can almost hear the wood
growing inside the tree
and the love growing
inside your heart.

I can't hear it for long,
for my own creaking
takes over.

But there is this rhythm
of how things grow that
we are privy to from
time to time.

Don't give up
because your pain
sometimes drowns
out the Source.

A Question to Walk With: Describe a current tension you are feeling between a pain or anxiety you are working with and your connection to a larger sense of things.

For more poetry for the soul, click here.

For more by Mark Nepo, click here.