I want to write about doors, particularly about opening doors that I have kept shut for too long. Robert Bly has a marvelous poem, Things to Think, and I see it as a sort of an invitation to us all. I'll share it here:
Think in ways you’ve never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
How extraordinary! A moose, risen from the lake, carting on his antlers a child of your own you've never seen? Why not! This is a unique time in our history, a time when we are being directed to distance ourselves, to keep the doors shut. But there are other doors we can open while we are social distancing. I want to write about those doors.
Bly's poem converges for me with another, Song of Man Who Has Come Through, by D. H. Lawrence. Here is the final stanza:
What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels
Admit them, admit them.
What are we shutting out in our fears? What are the three, strange angels that are knocking for admittance?
What if all of our prayers (or intentions) were immediately answered? What if asking and receiving, creating, is just part of our nature, but when the gift or answer to our summons arrives at the door, we are shutting it again and again, because the form that gift arrives in does not fit our conscripted idea of our end desire? We bar the door for so many reasons.
Admit them. Admit them.
The research of biologists Maturana and Varela demonstrates that 80% of our reality is directed by information we already have in our brains. We tend to see what we seek, and in doing so, I think we are missing a lot of potential. We are creating our world thought by thought and those thoughts feed action after action. We are simply too small if we are creating the future out of the past. Open the door!
My prayer is that as we close the doors of our homes and workplaces to each other during the pandemic, we will find new doors to open. I pray we will use this time to break the old patterns and stay curious, to welcome in the moose and the bear. To do this, we need to manage three things: first, we need to hear the knocking at the door. This means opening up to the possibility that we can be in real conversation with the universe, that as creatures of intention and attention we are co-creating our realities and are open to very real answers to our queries. Second, we need to open the door. This is an act of courage, for we really don't know what will be waiting on the doorstep, and it will seldom be what we are expecting. Finally, we need to see that "strange angel" and welcome it in. This will mean saying "yes" in a lot of places we have been saying "no." Hear. Open. See.
Who is that knocking? It is the three, strange angels. Admit them. Admit them.
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