Writing Exercise 1

Taken from Stephen Harrod Buhner's "Ensouling Language."

The instructions were to pick five words which are the five most important things in your life, your five top values - the five things which matter most to you in all the world.

After choosing those five words, write five poems, each of which must contain all five of words.

Here are my five words:

1) Family 
2) Accountability 
3) Self-Inquiry 
4) Collaboration 
5) Faith

Here are my five poems:

1. My five shimmering values - 
Family. Accountability. Self-Inquiry. Collaboration. Faith.

Five hopeful threads my world is strung upon,
the five strongest constellations
in the nightsky I see in my dreams,
the five elders I call upon
as I wrestle through to the potential within me.

These five fingers make up the hand of fate
as I balance precariously on her palm,
and every time I trip towards the edge or try to run away
these five truth-totems curl together,
gripping me gently in the soft silence
of what matters most.

2. Family! Love boldly.
Have faith in your collaborations,
trust in the accountability of the grand design
which brought you together.

Self-inquiry will equip you 
with the tools you need 
to see it through.

3. Self-inquiry is an entire family of tactics - 
there is no single authority 
on how best to safari the inner jungle.

Often many are used simultaneously,
a collaboration of mindset, physical surroundings, 
conversation-with-self and conversation-with-other.
(Although sometimes the listening of this invisible other
is felt as a spacious silence,
and their presence must be taken on faith.)

Ideally, individual members of these tactic-families
demand accountability of each other,
keeping each other honest
in the reporting of the subtle
inner-jungle shadows encountered.

4. Occasionally mystified by my experience of family,
there are times when the value of collaboration 
must be taken on faith.

There are times
when my well-bucket of self-inquiry
keeps coming up empty,
times when even my hunger for accountability deserts me
and it seems there is nothing left to keep me honest.

In fact, there are times
when I stop partaking of the meaning of life entirely,
for it's taste has turned to bitter ash in my mouth
and I am poisoned by the pointlessness of it all.

5. A faithful family - 
collaboratively accountable for the self-inquiry
undertake by every individual.