I find myself at this shoreline, drenched and still in a wash of life tides. So many little storms and awful swells tossed me around in a night long, almost endless. In those storms and swells were faces I’ve never known personally and those I cherish dearly daily, often kissing, celebrating life. And some faces I’ve never seen or touched but love. I kept grasping for the best wreckage to cling to, the “right” perspective to trust, knowing truth calls out somewhere in the love-support our hearts can illuminate. But with every grope in the direction of what looked to be secure and safe purchase, the waters welled up and slammed back down, turning these lovely safety vests into monsters plunging me under murky depths.
And then I let go, floating to a wild surface, holding to some faith in love, finding myself afloat while gentler tides swelled from within, sending me to foreign shores. But home. Home longed for but not known before all these little storms releasing.
While resting on this shore, I remember what was learned in my tossing, how the worst enemy out there is within. And the ugliest apathy claims some beating hearts and sleeping minds because it’s all they can do to cope. But, regardless of all these injuries, cripplings, wobbling feeble feet, mysteries of goodness divine thrive, sometimes found in wicked shadows. The long-tossing night of endless effort reveals no bad guys or good guys, no heroes or foes, just this washing flood of human artistry sometimes flotsam, jetsam surreal.
All these crashing tides found me not some profound and releasing truth but a freedom in surrendering to the artistry of love’s wilder works and savagespeaking songs singing out loud, sometimes screaming our lives a human collage of vivid soul. Those seas tell me there’s no sense to be made but love-sense and the sometimes nonsense of sharing discoveries as we accept the mutability of the known and the true. Only love redeems our loss and not always in ways we can measure, but as we let go and float, we’re soaked in a wonder no hands can hold…no grief can drown… and no tide can destroy.
J. Ruth Kelly 