Reflection #45 Beginner’s Mind

Each year brings new lessons.
some settle in gently,
others wait for us to soften, to listen.

Spiritual teachers urge us
to have a beginner’s mind——
an openness to uncertainty.

How often I’ve said,
“That’s just the way I am,”
as if experience were a period--

--instead of a comma.

Perhaps it’s worth another look
at labels I’ve worn thin
at stories grown distorted.

Now is not the time to harden,
but, with a beginner’s mind
to begin again—

Patricia D. Brown