Great Spirit,
let me remember:

The fire that takes is the same that clears.
The storm that shakes is the one that steers.
The silence in the sails is not absence
but the breath between becoming.

I lay down the armor I once mistook for love.
I release the weight I once called worth.
I forgive the mirrors who could not see me,
and I return
bare, but sovereign.

May I walk in rhythm with what is real.
Not to be chosen, but to be free.
Not to prove, but to live.
Not to soothe, but to heal.

May I give without bleeding,
and receive without shrinking.
Let my tenderness be power, not sacrifice.
Let my anger be clarity, not distortion.

Let my hands remember why they were made
to shape, not to grip.
To create, not to carry what is not mine.

And if I stand alone, let it not be on barren shore,
but deep within the well of being,
where in the garden of my heart
I find the soul and core
Far beneath the waves that pressed me, bare and alone,
where silence hums the unspoken,
but not unknown.

Aho

By Naim Ferguson, in prayer to all those effected by the Maui Wildfires