T h e M i l i t a n t & t h e M y s t i c
If I humbly come before you now
It’s as servant to warriors
As transcendence-seeker, a mystic.
The rationalist, a scientist love affair with evidence and effect sizes,
The shaman, observer of the nature of experience and unexplainables.
There is no brokering of peace
Between these two factions
No armistice, no v-day heroes,
Only oil and water
Living well in the mess.
Gentle time it takes to embrace polarities,
Loosening the boundary of my ego,
I rejected myself for years
In cycles despairing of one side or the other,
Withering my depth and faith during stretches of service,
Wandering off table-flipping my history and discipline.
Dedication to both in the braid,
Years crammed into libraries
No statistic unquestioned down to the last claim,
Years interrogating the breath in silence
Coaxing out the secrets of the observable and the assumed.
There is no reconciliation
No straightening this all out
No making sense
Territories not even on the same map
But all of this is absolutely true.
I’ve built my house in the eye of the contradiction
I stand full facing in the howl of the paradox,
Home for me in the thrash of the militant and the mystic.
#mygroundtruth
cjG