After many years considering doing a Dark Retreat, at the first viable opportunity I decisively stepped into the solitude of darkness for ten uninterrupted days. I journeyed into a small pitch-black room with a tiny bed, two wooden chairs, some clothes and my journal. I wasn’t sure if bringing a journal was a good idea, or if writing in the dark would even be legible. I tried it anyway, …what was there to lose?
On the 8th day, in the depths of that retreat with a pencil in my right hand, feeling the pages of the journal with my left and staring open-eyed into the darkness of the room the Tiny Miracles Series was born. Poem after poem arose out of that brilliant quiet darkness in the very order you will find them in now.
Since their inception in the dark womb of those days, I’ve edited them for several reasons. Some of the more obvious reasons are to flesh them out, to make them more clear and to allow them to ripen and grow. The other reason I chose to edit them was because of an insight that came to me in the dark: that bringing these poems into the light may diminish their potency. Due to the fact that these poems were born in the hushed and still perspective of the dark, simply viewing them in the light could transform them beyond recognition.
Our world looks and feels so very different in the light. The LED lights of how our minds perceive and analyze our experience can come to us with such certainty and rigidity that anything mysterious is devalued in the process. The dark, on the other hand, has such an honoring presence to it. It mirrors the mystery and magic of every single thing by enveloping it into itself.
With all of this in mind and heart, as I considered sharing these poems, I knew some things may be lost in translation. So in editing these Tiny Miracles I did my best to maintain their essence, while giving them the appropriate structural and artistic forms with which they might walk out into the brightness of the lit world.
Every photo and art piece you see here is my own and serves to compliment each poem with its own contemplative power. Even though these poems could be read in less than 10min they are meant to be enjoyed like a cup of tea on a spacious morning. May these poems, even if in the tiniest way, serve to open us to the dark mystery of our origin.