With us, we bring our grief – and I hope you do… [prose poem]

So this is it. If this were a room telling a story of my life, what rich fertile soil it has created. We are surging forward, a tsunami of light bursting onto the horizon, an unstoppable force. We are all here because we know each other – even those who have not yet met are already acquainted by the infinite turnings of life’s ability to recycle us into new and precious shapes and forms. With us, we bring our grief, and I hope you have because without it we are just empty words. Our grief that we have acknowledged and experienced is part of our connection to all that is, as is our joy, the fine dance between both states riptides, erupts, and compassionate presence can emerge. And that is what is needed here today. But right now we are dealing with people who are frightened and do not feel up to the task, who need convincing that they are alive, and capable. We know they are capable and our frustrations are simply signs of our ability to see a future that is not yet visible to others. We can do this, but must do it as a combination of our best and our worst selves, our levity and clear vision, and our doubting, vulnerable, open child within. Children will carry this world forward, so long as we access the wonderment, vision, arrogance and unstoppability of our own youth within, our own painful arrogance that dares to dream, to restore, to behold. That youth that cannot be stopped will stop the world instead, redirect, unleash and ride the guidance that only true risk-taking, revelation and vulnerability can receive.