The Only True Medicine

by Jeff Foster & Matt Licata

Healers, therapists, friends, and lovers!

When you sit with a friend in pain,

when their world no longer makes sense;

when confusion rages 

and no rest is to be found.

Just for a moment,

will you resist the temptation

to make things better,

to reassure them,

to provide answers,

even to heal them?

Will you offer your stillness, your listening,

your presence, and the warmth

of your immediacy?

Will you hold them in your heart

with the same tenderness

of a mother holding her little one?

Will you embrace them where they are,

without needing them to change or transform

according to your own needs and schedule?

Will you stay close,

holding your own impatience and discomfort near?

Will you look into their eyes

and see yourself?

Will you stay in the inferno of healing with them,

trusting in disintegration,

knowing that you are only witnessing

the falling away of an old dream?

Sometimes in doing nothing

everything is undone,

and love is revealed to be

the only true medicine.

The Journey- A poem from Mary Oliver

The Journey

 One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save the only life you could save