I WILL NOT LIVE AN UNLIVED LIFE...

I will not live an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to love
so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova

Writer and cancer-survivor Dawna Markova wrote that poem the night her father died with, as she says, a shrug. He died quietly, after having lived a life that was so uninteresting to him, so banal, so safe, and filled with fear. In the middle of the night, Markova awakened suddenly with a start, sat up in bed and thought, I will not live an unlived life. I will live and I will live deeply. And then she wrote the poem.
[ A Communion Meditation by Rev. Laureen E. Smith]