Clients often confront those of us engaged in the healing arts with perplexing and demanding dilemmas. It is part of what draws us into this work. Frequently, the queries stretch us with challenges that are either outside our life experience or too familiar from it. Either way, we can view the questions as threats to the presumption of our competence or doorways to new dimensions of understanding for both client and coach.

I was reminded of this recently by two events.  Last month’s annual Touched By A Horse Summit included the graduation ceremony of several persons who had successfully completed the intensive two-year coaching certification program. Having coached many TBAH students and graduates in past years and having shared in the launch of our own business, I am aware of questions that arise.  Sometimes they can be almost immobilizing, threatening our forward progress with the specter of inadequacy or failure.

The second recent event – the arrival in my email of one of my favorite poems by Denise Levertov – provides a tender reinforcement of the power of embracing questions as pathways to new insight and appreciation.  And remember, we need not be in the helping professions to embrace the questions of those whom we value most.

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

(Sands of the Well)