What is it to stand at the edge?
–The gateway opens, and something new emerges:
something really really new.
This breath, right now, for instance:
Not this breath as a ‘breath’.
But this breath.
This breath revitalizes the world.
When I follow this breath down
down
down
I find something that has no bottom
no beginning,
a nothing
that is a force to be reckoned with.
It’s a path of inexhaustible energy,
and deep tranquillity.
When I follow this path
in the next breath, I find myself opening to the Creator
able to ask, “and how is God present here, now?
on this dark, rainy day–how?”
There’s room in me
at the edge of creation,
to turn, and catch creation
in the act.
tao is the center of the whirlpool
empty, it’s never drained
it’s bottomless!
it’s the source
it blunts the sharp
resolves complications
softens discord
unites the world
dark, tranquil, serene
it continues forever
i don’t know how it began
it’s before antecedents
before God’s creative process
— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
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©2010 Kye Nelson
