Hold On to the Thread

   Today I thought I'd share a poem that I've found personally meaningful. It's by the late William Stafford, a poet with roots sunk in the Quaker tradition. Here it is:

THE WAY IT IS

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

    What is that thread for you? Faith? A personal calling? Conscience? Integrity? God? All I know is, to go through life without finding  that thread is to be like a kite adrift on the shifting winds - not free, but lost.

   Holding on to the thread when you do find it-- that's another challenge.  We just want so many things at different levels of our being -- and many times what we want on one level can contradict what we want on another. Much as we'd like to have it all, we can't. There are priorities to be set, choices to be made, doors to be closed. That's why holding on to the thread can be scary and painful.

   At some point however, you discover that the thread is not just a guide through the labyrinths of life, it is also the safety line that bears you up, keeps you from falling even as you descend inch by inch past chasms of inevitable grief and loneliness. In that darkness where there is no light to see, the thread no longer seems fragile; it is a steel cable bearing the full heft of your burdened and burdensome self. In those moments, you seem to know instinctively that even if everything else in your world were to fall away -this connection would remain.

   Where does the thread lead? I dare say it leads us home, and here I mean home in the sense of all that our  deepest hearts want "home" to be - the place where we can be ourselves, and love ourselves, and know ourselves to be loved and cherished in our own particular quirkiness. It is that place beyond fear where we can embrace one another freely, and laugh at our sins and failings knowing they too have ultimately led us to this sacred ground. It is that place of reunion and reconciliation. It is the place where we experience ourselves as one with one another, and one in God.