Sunday, January 19, 2014

of relationship and career



the hindsight fallacy

I feel that the best of my life
has much of the improbable about it:
I cannot quite understand how I got together
with the wonder who has bound her life to mine,
it feels like I must have won a lottery,

I can look back and remember forks 
which I took
and which she took
and see our paths come together,











































it’s easy then to slip into the hindsight fallacy of the historian
who knows the event and sees the sequence that led to it,
and it’s easy, and false, 
then to imagine that that sequence is highlighted
and should have been visible to those at the time,



looking  back on my own life
I remember the forks of the choosing,
I remember the doubts, and when I should have had doubts,
I remember hope for each relationship,
I remember the trouble of figuring out who I am,
who the other is,
and how we might reach toward being one, 

I also love my job
and how who I am 
can increasingly reach toward the best of who I can be,
as I help shepherd student after student
to reach toward the best that is within them
and then work to let that best 
break back into the light from which it comes,



I can tell a story of the history of the school,
and I can see and trace the new paths
that have led us to being who we are,
yet I also live in the present
that calls a future into being,
and I know that the choices we make
in knowing who we are and creating who we can be
might lead toward wholeness--or not,
every choice has within it 
the possibility of the lesser mistakenly chosen,

life has much of that of God playing dice with the universe,
and still I hope that the right intention can increase the odds
that we will choose wisely,
that a wholeness calls to us to reach toward it
and that we can move rightly,

I hope for every relationship and career to work out
and enable each of us to become the best
inherent in every reach toward order.

by Henry H. Walker
January 16, ’14

1 comment:

Jen Feldman said...

Gorgeous. I really needed to read this poem today, Henry - thank you. The pics of you & Joan are simply heartwarming, too.