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The Shoes that Brought You Here

We could not pass up the opportunity to hear poet David Whyte, when he spoke in San Antonio earlier this month. Two years ago, Whyte's poem, "Tan-y-Garth," provided me words to speak at my father's funeral:

... The farm

passed down but never possessed lives father to son,

life after life, feeding the sheep with grass,

the people with sheep and memory with years

lived looking at mountains.

Whyte was writing about a place in Wales, but the words still fit my father, raised on a sheep ranch in Oregon, his memory (and mine, too) fed by years looking at the Ochoco Mountains and the Cascades.

Now, as I approach retirement, Whyte has given me a new image that helps me understand the transition that awaits: In his poem, "Finisterre," written for a friend who made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Whyte calls the reader

... to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread....

On his website, Whyte describes poetry as "language against which Whyte autographing book

we have no defense." While I still have plenty of defenses - denial and procrastination head the list! - when it comes to thinking about retirement, I suspect that Whyte's words about abandoning the shoes that brought me here have wedged open a chink in my defenses. The words tease my mind with the possibility of finding a different way to tread as I move into the coming season of my life.

- by Bill

A Pilgrim Journey - by Jan

The evening with storyteller, poet, author David Whyte left me pregnant with awe and amazement, filled with the glow of really knowing life and the life in which I live . . . in words I had not yet thought nor spoken and for which I even would have no words. He spoke of my journey - my grief, my joys, my turnings, and my awakenings. Poetry can do that. Coupled with brilliant understanding of archetypical myths and legends, classical literature, and the comingling of cultures, David Whyte is one of the finest.

I have been 'following' David Whyte for more than ten years but on this evening we seemed to merge upon the same path. As he performed his poems in his latest "Pilgrim" collection, I knew we have traveled together in some remarkable soul-journey. It is not surprising that he signed the book Pilgrim, "To Bill and Jan - and the pilgrim soul in you both."

Many of David Whyte's artistic word images will long linger - and modern technology provides us with a well to visit again and again, to marvel at even more artistry. Whyte's writings and photo art can be found on his Facebook page -- a welcome entry into recalling, knowing, and holding: "There are places that seem to expect us: to take us in like the pilgrims from the way ahead...." *

*from "Etruscan Tomb". David Whyte, Pilgrim. Langley: Many Rivers Press, 2012.

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Sincerely, Bill Howden & Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries