Lifelines Poem by Mary Champion

We can rise and keep ourselves together.
We can ride the restless rushing streams,
flying on the wings of Life's disorder;
wide awake and choosing our own dreams.

We were born into the doubt and darkness,
fighting to make meaning from the fear,
trying to explain the past and present,
but longing for a future we can hear.
Reaching for the light,
trying to make it right,
with hearts and minds that pulled us different ways,
wasting precious years
weeping angry tears,
hopeless when we find we're prisoners
trapped within the maze.

We can rise and keep ourselves together.
We can ride the restless rushing streams,
flying on the wings of Life's disorder;
wide awake and choosing our own dreams.

At last, we found our wings and learned to fly,
renewed with hope we soared into the sky,
breaking free from all our chains at last.
But there's no way we'll ever break
from our pre-human past.
These walls within the maze defy our rage,
meeting at infinity, our own eternal cage.
We'll never fly above the things we are,
we've fought too hard and travelled out too far.
We have to dive down deep into our soul,
find who we are and build ourselves a role.
Then...

We can rise and keep ourselves together.
We can ride the restless rushing streams,
flying on the wings of Life's disorder;
wide awake and choosing our own dreams.

Look downward, inward to your roots and see
the stream of life that dreamed and let us be.
Its flood is in full spate
and heedless of our fate,
but we must learn to travel where it goes,
keeping even keel,
holding to what's real
and knowing we can only move the way its current flows.
Filled with love and truth. No longer blind,
enlightened by an understanding mind,
we'll take the chances offered by Life's whim
assured it's all within our hands which options sink or swim.
For…

We can rise and keep ourselves together.
We can ride the restless rushing streams,
flying on the wings of Life's disorder;
wide awake and choosing our own dreams.