What is mine to do?

Lately, I have been sitting with the following poem by Khalil Gibran:

On Children

And a woman
who held a babe
against her bosom said,
”Speak to us of Children.”

And he said:

“Your children
are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters
of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you
but not from you,
and though they are with you
yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love
but not your thoughts,
For they have
their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies
but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward
nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which
your children
as living arrows
are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark
upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand
be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

- Khalil Gibran (1883 - 1931; in his book, The Prophet)

Our creative children

I have known and loved this poem for many years, and have gone back to it again and again as I try to navigate parenting a rather independent-minded teen.

But today, a nuance struck me that I had not related to this poem until now.

What if we think of “children” not just as our literal (physical) children, but all our children - our thoughts, ideas, projects. All that we conceive, gestate and eventually give birth to.

We think of ideas that are, for now, just a glimmer; an inkling at the back of our minds. Projects that we are gestating. Projects that are in the “planning” phases. Projects that are further along, but we feel are stalled, or not going as we want them to.

What if Gibran’s prescription applies to them all?

As I sit with this notion, the lines I am absolutely falling in love with are:

“For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

What if we are being disingenuous when we ask the question, “what is mine to do?” What if we are confusing this question with other questions?

When “what is mine to do” becomes “what will be the result of what I do?”

In the Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita (The Divine Song), Krishna, the divine charioteer, imparts this wisdom to his student and friend, Prince Arjuna:

Karmanye Vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana
Ma karma phala hetur bhur mate sangostvakarmani"
- Bhagavad Gita, Chapter II Verse 47

Translated, it means, "You have a right to action alone, never to its fruit. Your motivation should not be fruit of action; nor should you be attached to inaction."

This is profound. If I do what is mine to do, with as much integrity as I can muster, but am not attached to what the results will look like, I gift myself with tremendous freedom. Freedom to experiment, to be creative, to change course midway if that’s what is called for.

“What is mine to do” and “how will I get it done” are two separate questions

One of my teachers, the Trickster Redeemer astrologer, Caroline Casey, wrote a book called “Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche.” Caroline has a real gift for the metaphor. She looks at the planets in our astrological charts as “gods” who have different roles in our life and life’s work.

She starts the discussion of the planetary gods with Saturn, the farthest planet from the sun easily visible to the naked eye. In her book, this is how she describes Saturn:

"Saturn thus demarcates the boundary between the visible and invisible. The planet Saturn is bounded by a unique ring system that has been a source of wonder for its symmetric beauty since Galileo first gazed upon it through his telescope in 1610. Ringmaster and Ring-leader, Saturn’s province includes time, boundaries, laws of limitation and definition, form, structure, and authority. We begin with Saturn because he presides over the new year and new beginnings, as well as being the god who defines our terms and our tasks."
- Casey, Caroline (Making the Gods Work for You).

Casey understands the role of Saturn as the place where we claim our authority. In other words, we become authors of our lives. Note what she says above. Saturn is the god of the beginnings. He is the threshold-keeper, and we cannot initiate any task without propitiating Saturn.

How do we propitiate saturn?

By being clear about the “what,” and not confusing it with the “how.”

Because, according to Casey, the “how” is not the job of Saturn. Saturn’s job - at the threshold of the visible and the invisible - ends at gaining clarity with “what.”

Manifesting “what is mine to do” requires surrender

Once we become clear about “what is mine to do,” we are ready to step over the threshold. And like the myths of old, we are asked to make a sacrifice to the threshold guardian.

According to Casey, the sacrifice we are asked to make is of any notion we might have of “how” we might achieve “what” is ours to do. We are asked to let go of certainty, which belongs in the realm of Saturn.

Casey writes:

"Whereas Saturn describes the personal and collective script that we have all been assigned, the planets beyond Saturn (or “trans-Saturnian”) teach us how to transcend and further rewrite these scripts...

Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus are the Change Gods, the forces of dynamic transformation who hold the keys to personal and social liberation...

When we have been stripped of familiar certainty, the Outer Planet parts of us rejoice: “At last, these humans have run out of plans—now we can work with them!”…

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto want us, individually and collectively, to become them, or at least to become their agents. “Change! Dissolve! Transform!” they exhort us.

When Uranus shatters an old pattern of familiar misery, we first become awakened; then we become awakeners, agents of Uranus.

Neptune dissolves our old visions and values to allow new visions to come alive; we then become visionaries.

Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld, the domain of death, rebirth, initiation, and transformation. When Pluto works us over, we first become transformed; then we become agents of transformation.”

- Casey, Caroline (Making the Gods Work for You).

Thus, we surrender our personal “what” at the altar of the transpersonal “change gods.” We allow them to take our central spark, our intention, our “what,” - and forge it in the hot kiln of transformation into something that will likely look very different from what we expected it to be. Often, the final “product” is much more spectacular than anything we could have ever anticipated from where we stood when we created the intention. Caroline once told me that if I could truly step aside, and surrender my “plans” to these change gods, what they will produce “will make you howl with laughter!” And to the extent that I have been able to step aside, I attest the prediction to be true!

The question then really becomes: are we ready to surrender our precious children? Both physical ones or psycho-spiritual ones? To be “acted upon” by the gods, and be transformed into something that we did not foresee? Can we step back and watch with wonder and awe as they become something far beyond our rigid definitions of “right,” or “good?”

Surrendering our plan to “The Plan”

So, we go back to Gibran, and say with him:

“You (WE) are the bows from which
your (OUR) children
as living arrows
are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark
upon the path of the infinite,
and He (SHE) bends you with His (HER) might
that His (HER) arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand
be for gladness;
For even as He (SHE) loves the arrow that flies,
so He (SHE) loves also the bow that is stable.”