Your New Vessel (a poem) by Ron Miller

Only when a lifetime has whitened your hair

Only when sorrow and pain and joy have etched themselves upon your  countenance

Only then will you come to see yourself whole.

Yea, only when you have loved, and lost, and loved again

Only when you have travelled many roads

And left a hundred projects unfinished

Only then will you come closer to seeing yourself whole.

Only when you have bared yourself before the gaze

Of one who has seen you naked all along

Only when you have cast off the covers in the bed of your own self-deceits

and self-defeats

Only then will you come to your Maker

to be made whole.

Only when the wind and the water have weathered the edges of you

Only when you seem to yourself but a remnant of what you once were

Yet find to your surprise you are so much more

Only then will you behold yourself whole.

Not as arms and legs

Not only as thoughts and feelings

Not simply as deeds and accomplishments

But as something wholly transparent

            A new / old vessel

            A clean vessel 

            A filled vessel.

Only then will you find your new name

Forever etched upon the face of your new vessel

And find yourself whole

And holy

And more beautiful than ever.