My DNA, such as it is, swims in the veins of two amazing young men – my sons, Calum – 23 and Graeme – 18. Each morning, looking back from the bathroom mirror is a reminder that a percentage of my younger self dwells in their lives. To some degree, when they see their own reflections, they are seeing me. As they experience fear, pain, remorse or joy, they do so in ways similar to my own. Their responses, either good or bad, to the involuntary stimuli thrown out from a quivering universe will be reminiscent of my own. Whatever I’ve been able to cobble together as my present ‘self’, God and I struggling together, is what they too must face. It will be their challenge as they overcome in themselves my numerous knotted patterns of being that, sometimes, can strangle or eviscerate. But it is also their gift, implanted in their psyches to help guide them in those mirky moments that will require whatever small intuition was gifted me.

Watching my younger son graduate from high school last Thursday night (6/5/14) was pause enough to sing the praise of both these men. I cannot claim to be half the man I need to be for them. Indeed, I cannot always claim I’ve been a man at all to them. What I can say with a clear conscience and not inconsiderable pride is how much I wish I were more like them. That more of them might be seen in me. My life, my energy, the very blood in my veins, belongs to them.

Their calling now is to find their calling; to find their truest selves; to be their most passionate selves for a very needy world that awaits them, and needs who they are (thanks Mr. Buechner). Precious few would I trust to write what they should most hear. Today, I entrust this sacred task into the hands of the late John O’Donohue…

For the Unknown Self

So much of what delights and troubles you

Happens on a surface

You take for ground.

Your mind thinks your life alone,

Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,

Yet it seems that a little below your heart

There houses in you an unknown self

Who prefers the patterns of the dark

And is not persuaded by the eye’s affection

Or caught by the flash of thought.

 

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience

With all your unfolding expression,

Is never drawn to break into light

Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness

And misjudge what you do and who you are.

 

It presides within like an evening freedom

That will often see you enchanted by twilight

Without ever recognizing the falling night,

It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:

All you do and say and think is fostered

Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

 

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease

That is not ruffled by disappointment;

It presides in a deeper current of time

Free from the force of cause and sequence

That otherwise shapes your life.

 

Were it to break forth into day,

Its dark light might quench your mind,

For it knows how your primeval heart

Sisters every cell of your life

To all your known mind would avoid,

 

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,

Offering you only discrete glimpses

Of how you construct your life.

 

At times, it will lead you strangely,

Magnetized by some resonance

That ambushes your vigilance.

 

It works most resolutely at night

As the poet who draws your dreams,

Creating for you many secret doors,

Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

 

It has the dignity of the angelic

That knows you to your roots,

Always awaiting your deeper befriending

To take you beyond the threshold of want,

Where all your diverse strainings

Can come to wholesome ease.

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Picture found here