To my mind, one of the great necessary inner disciplines is the ability to stay close to what is still hidden and unannounced in us, the interior ‘deep but dazzling darkness’ out of which any new and worthwhile future will be announced.

SOMETIMES

by David Whyte

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you