Yield

“What power had I / Before I learned to yield? / Shatter me, great wind: / I shall possess the field.” I have been mulling over these lines (“Milkweed”) from Richard Wilbur’s  in “Two Voices in a Meadow.” So often I have had to yield, and feel shattered, before  growth. I have to yield anger to forgive, and yield self-righteousness to confess. I have to yield the expectations of a project to enjoy what it has become instead. I have to yield hopes that I have clung to, and the illusion of control, before I can find deeper hope and peace. It is always a struggle to yield by my free choice, but I hope I am laying down neural tracks–even highways–of  “thy will be done.”