Listening to life

I started a new book tonight in the quiet moments when my husband was giving my kids a bath. I love it when that happens! I would like to become a more contemplative person and I'm hoping the book "Let Your Life Speak" by Parker Palmer will help.

I wanted to share the opening poem with you because I think it is beautiful:

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say. 

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know 

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

  - William Stafford, "Ask Me"