Offered by Carmel Heaney
We were delighted to receive the profound poem “Like a Holy Face” accompanied by a video and a focusing reflection from Carmel Heaney. Carmel is a regular attendee at our bi-monthly sessions and often comments in relation to the unique experience of focusing with a poem.
On reading and listening to Carmel recite this poem the lines “I know you will be here right here, untouched by time” I recall and resonate with a quote from Gene Gendlin
“That great big everything is always there, no matter what else you are dealing with, that’s always there as a resource” sourced from the
InFocus News Feed 17/7/24 “Serendipity, Social Transformation, The Great Big Everything, and giving Gene a Haircut” Eugene Gendlin (to Joan Klagsburn)
Marie Mc Guigan
Poem
Like a Holy Face
Only as a child am I awake
and able to trust
that in every fear and every night
I will behold you again.
However often I get lost,
however far my thinking strays,
I know you will be here, right here,
untouched by time.
To me it is as if I were at once
infant, boy, man and more.
I feel that only as it circles
is abundance found.
I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can't make out.
The day's labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands.
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Reflection
This poem was given to me at a time when I was sent pictures of my 5 month old great grand niece in her mothers arms and when I looked at that child's face it was completely confident that everything she wanted was there, no fear, no anxiety, no questions, no doubts, she just knew she would be taken care of
I would find it and do find it very difficult to practice that kind of trust. The day's anxieties and fears and questions are a mountain in the face of me I'm not speaking of big traumatic events but simply, you know the difficult phone call I have to make or will I get to that important appointment on time.
Or should I be making plans for this or that event in the future the holiday or special occasion. These are all mountains in my mind.
And yet there is always, behind all that a force that is leading me on, that is guiding me and it is always there and I must learn to return to it. It is always here right here in every moment.
"To me it is as if I were at once
infant, boy, man and more.
I feel that only as it circles
is abundance found."
This is the sense that I am at the same time living in the present, but also in the past, and in the future and all of the events and happenings and experiences of those times are all still here.
This is the abundance of the present moment.
"I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can't make out.
The day's labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands."
When I connect with this power that is behind and beyond everything, everything gets simpler including all those molehills and mountains of anxiety that were in my mind.
And I am full of thankfulness for this which is Like a Holy Face sometimes obscured by my dark hands which are the ego my egoic self.
Carmel Heaney
July 2024
