Re-Member

“…the re-membering occurs when we begin to reassemble the parts of our inner knowing that we lost by taking the risks involved in being human. Birth into a human body is similar to taking an entire universe of information and consciousness, shoving it onto a microchip, and placing the particle containing all the wisdom inside a tiny human body that has no control over its own movements for a while…

    That birth experience alone is enough to create forgetting. From that point on, our daily human experiences present enough shocks that we become aware of less and less of our inherent potential. How’s that for a Coyote trick? You have to learn to gain control over your growing baby body, then learn to deal with all the emotions of growing up and all the judgments of others who tell you something is right or wrong, no matter how you see it with your child’s eyes of wonder. We learn and adopt habits based upon the families we have and the cultures we grow up in. No wonder we forget! Then, later, we learn to drop everything we picked up that does not support us and reassemble all the beliefs that do help us remember who we are, why we are here, where we come from, and how it all works together. That’s some task! No wonder we are required to have an abundant sense of humor in order to survive that kind of cosmic joke!” Jamie Sams – Dancing The Dream, Pg. 152

Love is big enough to endure the shift, the dropping of all we picked up that does not support who we are, the reassembly of beliefs into a tapestry more suited to our ancient make-up of innocence and shadow. 

Courtesy of Dave Grant

jruthkelly15 Comments

The Wild Flesh

Clarissa Pinkola-Estes has been inspiring my world here again lately. This particular passage of truth nourishes, reminding me why it’s so vital to stay in touch with joyful in-skin, in-flesh awareness and what she beautifully refers to as “Joyous Body: Wild Flesh” in her book “Women Who…” The following is taken from page 200 of her epic work:

“In the instinctive psyche, the body is considered a sensor, an informational network, a messenger with myriad communication systems–cardiovascular, respiratory, skeletal, autonomic, as well as emotive and intuitive. In the imaginal world, the body is a powerful vehicle, a spirit who lives with us, a prayer of life in its own right. In fairy tales, as personified by magical objects that have superhuman qualities and abilities, the body is considered to have two sets of ears, one for hearing in the mundane world, the other for hearing the soul; two sets of eyes, one set for regular vision, another for far-seeing; two kinds of strength, the strength of the muscles and the invincible strength of soul. The list of twos about the body goes on…

hearing the soul

 …The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it. Like the Rosetta stone, for those who know how to read it, the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed. It is valued for its articulate ability to register immediate reaction, to feel profoundly, to sense ahead.

The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperance, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction. It speaks through its constant tiny dance, sometimes swaying, sometimes a-jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the center, and rising hope.

The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the press is fleshed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream.

vital, responsive, enduring...

To confine the beauty and value of the body to anything less than this magnificence is to force the body to live without its rightful spirit, its rightful form, its right to exultation. To be thought ugly or unacceptable because one’s beauty is outside the current fashion is deeply wounding to the natural joy that belongs to the wild nature. Women have good reason to refute psychological and physical standards that are injurious to spirit and which sever relationship with the wild soul. It is clear that the instinctive nature of women values body and spirit far more for their ability to be vital, responsive, and enduring than by any measure of appearance.”

—

We so often endure a spiritual tyranny of messages bombarding what could be the experience of wildness, of the unashamed, fearless flesh of skin and spirit. Media, historical decrees from decades gone but their crippling hum sometimes conjured by a familiar event…all of it stirring up the psyche, asking us to tune into the drumbeat below the myriad layers of possible attitudes about the body, about the body’s own intelligence, to tap into a rhythm of whole person acceptance, body, skin, warts, glow. All. Of. Self.

I’ve been aware lately, more than usual, of past messages that filtered through to me in particular. Long skirt for covering the “woman’s body” and no real clarity as to why, what was wrong with me that required I cover up? I saw a woman yesterday with her long skirt, her long braid, her chosen path, grey hairs streaking their own song of meaning. I struggled to accept it. Not her, but the cloaking uniform of adherence to creed, the inadvertant highlighting of her frame in the attempt to cover. I struggle, one part of me in the woods naked and the other part understanding, knowing why we choose our creeds, why we adhere to some religious views. No one path is all good, or all bad. But I wonder at the messages we swallow from such tender ages. What do we want and do we even know? Are our wants even our wants? Did that woman ever have a chance to know her own true desires or did the creeds form her like they sought to form me from a tender age? I have some distinct views on this posing as questions here. I’m trying hard to just dance around the bush. But the truth is, there’s no turning back for her or for me and yet our paths have gone long and winding differently down two opposing trails of meaning. Both are precious in their attempts to treasure what is vital.

So, what of it? I shook away my concern for her and walked away. Past the memories haunting and humming in my own body’s record of historical touch, growth, dance. The activities of my world write their own new stories on my being, even in and on my body, never erasing what was but scribing anew, the ink-jive of their words on the wellspring of soul whisper deep into every one of my fields, spilling seeds of newness, conjuring up that contrasting lush against the backdrop of a desert past.

spirit scene

This is what we can do with the magick of the wild flesh. We gift ourselves with sometimes polar pulses pounding out a new song, a life beyond ruins and into healing as we reach out into life with awareness, with an instinctive sense of our massive power to heal what we desire to heal within and beyond our own wild flesh. Bit by bit, layer by layer we undo the worst of the messages and incorporate those vibrations, those declarations most alive with truth, with awareness, forming -as best we can- desires in accord with the fearless (but wise) soul. Who am I beyond that fear that formed my reaction to life back there around the bend when I declared it my job to protect what was important to _____ (insert person’s name here or whatever applies)? How much has it woven itself into my being, doing, living? What if, what if we can transform motives into something that honors the wild flesh of humanity without fear, without indifference?

jruthkelly9 Comments

New Year Naked

These songs resonate lately. Much roils and rumbles in my core, washing up on the shoreline of my thoughts, leaving me lost on where to begin, which detail do I pick up first and what do I do? It’s time for big change.

“We’re all lost. We’re all found. We’re all the same.
Just one heart beats in us, with different names.
Just one heart, with different names.

Hold me inside you…” (Vertical Horizon)

“…me, I figure as each breath goes by, I only own my mind.
The north is to south what the clock is to time
there’s east and there’s west and there’s eveywhere life
I know I was born and I know that I’ll die.
The in-between is mine, I am mine…
The full moon is looking for friends at high tide.
The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied…” (Pearl Jam)

AND this one line, over and over and over…

“Tidal waves don’t beg forgiveness, crashed and on their way…
Nature has its own religion, gospel from the land.
Father ruled by long division, young men they pretend.
Old men comprehend…” (Pearl Jam)

And this one…

“You can spend your whole life building something from nothing
one storm can come and blow it all away, build it anyway.” (Martina McBride)

The bold lines are the ones that ruthlessly dog me, nipping at the heels of my retreat from myself. When this kind of stash and crash of tides and words, songs and impressions haunt my world, I know life is trying to get through to me, pushing past the rationalizing and over-analyzing and doubt. But I’m hard-headed. I roll the eyes and throw my hands up in the air with frustration. There’s so damn much to climb still. Why should I check back in with myself? So, I purchased my Brezsny forecast. Love is on the ticket for me this year and just when I’ve declared I’m not going in that direction in my heart, made peace with life without the great big love, the one we all long for and some of us actually experience (I mean marriage/partnership/whatever you call it). There it is. Love, baby. Whatever. I’ve been getting the lovers card in tarot. Over and over and over. I think of union within, the much-needed marriage of opposing forces in my soul and and and. It keeps coming back down to my coming home to me. Everything else can come find me as I reach out to life in love as love for love love love. Including that grandest of loves love.

To top it off, someone keeps clicking on my la-loba posts. Over and over. Where is my la loba? I need the songs of the old woman, unearthing the bones and singing life into the wolfish best of me. Where is she? I feel her within and in my closest friendships. My mate, the woman-friend who is the air in the lungs, the man I would’ve married if she were a man spoke huge words of exhortatation to me yesterday. (Everyone should have such a friend. Wow. She’s the one I can tell all the nasty stuff and the great stuff too. She’s the witness of my sorrows and dreams. She’s the one who helps me brave the dating scene, shaking her head or giving a thumbs up at the prospective male suitors and oftentimes holding up a higher standard when I’m full of shite.) We sat and wept together over what life is showing us. They were good tears of healing. I should’ve felt like leaping tall buildings but something within me resists this last great push. (okay, on this current TRAIL…the last great push…and then the next and) I’m down. Not depressed. Pushed down by some tides and just sitting in the hermit’s cave. Brewing, humming. Somewhere there’s a song that sings every layer of restoration.

One book I’d rather never lose found me again. Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet adds words to the brew:

“The girl and the woman, in their new, their own unfolding, will but in passing be imitators of masculine ways, good and bad, and repeaters of masculine professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions it will become apparent that women were only going through the profusion and vicissitude of those (often ridiculous) disguises in order to cleanse their own most characteristic nature of the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more confidently, must surely have become fundamentally riper people, more human people, than easygoing man, who is not pulled down below the surface of life by the weight of any fruit of his body, and who, presumptuous and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, borne its full time…will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere femininity in the mutations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it. Some day…some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being…This advance…will change the love experience, which is now full of error, will alter it from the ground up, reshape it into a relation that is meant to be of one human being to another, no longer of man to woman. And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and geintle, and kind and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.”

I type that out and see the image of the two loves in Avatar (the movie, yes, i love it). She’s insisting he go, leave their world. She stands there on the root of an amazing tree and says “You have big heart….” (in explanation of why she didn’t leave him to be killed by the wilder animals of her forest) and then she gets in his face, opening her hand and pushing out in his direction “but STUPID! Stupid!” She meant that he did not see, that he did not know the earth or life without the egotistical reach of “knowledge,” that he did not value even those animals who had tried to kill him. I can relate to that reaction. I’d rather run and hide amongst the trees. But that stupid one is in me too. “I” get it all figured out and that knowledge piecemeals and divides my wise soul, strips the trees away and “experts” me to death. I just “know.” Haaaaaa….big heart but STUPID. But deeper words chase me, the parts of me not stupid perk up and listen.

Life Living
jRuth Kelly - Copyright 2009, 2010

The conversation of yesterday led me to the heart of the woods, to that part of me ancient. It’s time to build again. I find the pieces of the songs come together in that one Rilke spill. And he doesn’t leave the ground out. FROM THE GROUND…UP. The spiritual me is the grounded me, the citizen of earth…long exiled. When you’ve had deeply spiritual and even “mystical” experiences within Christianity and then walk away from almost all the parts that anchored you…where do you put the spiritual one within? I’ve shoved her in a corner, disgusted with the alternatives, the groupie gropings of masses finding so much “spirituality” like the latest trend or candy and spitting out “knowledge” without intimacy of the roots. Ohm ohm…no need to own just ohm ohm. But I don’t mince words or have some snobby nasty ideals. (forgive me, but i want to know people who can articulate why they believe what they believe and know why they embrace certain spiritual paths and if they don’t know then they don’t pretend to know or be expert) So I content myself with roiling in the corner, shoving that part of me into hiding. But friends find me and speak of Spirit while soulmates (there is not just ONE of those, by the way) haunt me with their truths. “Stay wild.” Relentless, that tide.

It’s time to assimilate, incorporate and let go. As we keep building on the solitude of our personal truths and needs, the internal rift heals, the outward manifestation reveals and somehow that spiritually mature human creature builds. The songs and their pieces form a tapestry of meaning, stripping away the fig leaves of my “knowledge,” guiding me to the tree of life. 

On with it…

jruthkelly6 Comments

Daunting Dante . . .

Lately my days have been spent trekking through the cold mud of literary landscapes and:

“Gross hailstones, water gray with filth and snow streaking down across shadowed air…” (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy – Dante’s Inferno)

Dante’s description of the third circle of hell is anything but hot and yet I love the contradictions heralding the layers of perceptions of hell. We have fire. We have ice. Dante’s world is cold, the worst state of the heart. But his passion for “righteousness” (or was it POLITICS?! methinks that’s the fire.) burned through his creativity, piercing centuries of religion with the worst of damnation’s offerings. I can only shake my head in awe and wonder. Such tenacity and brilliance and so much energy expended in reaction. Part of me wonders where we’d be today if this work had not burned through centuries of the devout, hopeful of God’s approval.

Where do you land after you’ve read Dante’s Inferno? Do you run back to the fiery realms of the more popular infernal damnation? It’s pretty mild compared to Dante’s ripping, shredding, devouring, icy, dismembering annals of recrimination…

Birthday Card From Ev
Nothing Much of Dante Here...

It’s been mind-numbing. But while wading through the slush, compiling dissections for literary criticism of the third circle of Dante’s vision, my kids took the time to inundate me with chocolate cake, gifts and cards. Now there’s a bit of salvation: chocolate and cards and laughter.

My youngest didn’t realize how perfectly timed his card to me, shown above. I let out a howl. For one thing, the card has the word “hell” in it and this is a BIG DEAL for my son. He doesn’t much like cussing. But he’s heard me let a few slip. Especially the one I just don’t think of as a curse word. I mean, really. HELL. This card is his way of embracing the more impulsive, human parts of his mom. I thought it mighty big of him and more loving than any gruesomely conjured divine “love” freezing us all out of compassion and hope in the name of “redemption.” Oiy, but I DON’T have a problem with some of religion’s layers. It’s NOT like any of it has oppressed whole centuries of lives or shackled minds in fear. [sarcasm alert]

Is it? Or is it that we’ve just not had the appetite for anything but the burning cold shut-out? How much has religion influenced and how much has it facilitated what has been the inevitably harsh boil of self-hatred? Where does it start?

I don’t know. I just know I need cats and kids with bigger hearts than the pseudo-god (as opposed to the very real Divine flow loving) and delicious fire burning us all into acceptance of every layer of what it is to be human, every “circle” of the “hell” we can make the most of, in spite of centuries of condemnation. And comic relief from the son whose sense of humor runs deep, drawing inspiration from veins of precious wicked refusal of shame:

Cat Cure
The Cat Cure

Is it any wonder my favorite Psalm includes these words:

“If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Thy hand will lead me…Even the darkness is not dark to Thee…darkness and light are alike to Thee…” (excerpts from Psalm 139)

Somewhere between the daunting realms of Dante and the Psalms of David, we run into the truth. These beds we make in hell, we make ourselves – even if it’s all we were taught to do up to that point. The heights we climb, we choose them. And somewhere past the worst distortion of love and around the damnation bend we find the real thing. The only solid salvation. It will likely lick your toes and meow. It will beg your brain to melt and cease the endless dismembering of self in thoughts of good and evil. It will definitely inundate you with a rich acceptance chuckling in the love of children. It will likely ask you to bend a few rules and cook up something steamy delicious behind closed doors.

Praise God and pass the firewood. I’m ready to forget Dante!

jruthkelly13 Comments

Richness Repeating . . .

“…to speak of love…means to speak of the ultimate and real need in every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean that it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very natue of man.”

Erich Fromm – The Art Of Loving

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Fromm Feasts On Reasonable Faith . . .

. . . faith in the evidence of humanity’s consistent (not denying the presence of tumult, of fatal error, of ugly flaws) efforts to find the most effective expressions of love and all the bumps along the way, all the faulty notions of love melting in the heat of failures horrific whose edges brutally eliminate illusions and distortions of love. Love as something other than a trumped-up scam of exploitation and manipulation. Love as something whispering of the value of every pulse of human experience, of all those ideals that support that very value, of all that supports, nurtures and defends the preciousness of one life and one life’s right to autonomous expression in harmony with the earth.

From his book “The Art of Loving” Erich Fromm speaks:

     “I am of the conviction that the answer of the absolute incompatibility of love and ‘normal’ life is correct only in an abstract sense. The principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible. But modern society seen concretely is a complex phenomenon. A salesman of a useless commodity, for instance, cannot function economically without lying; a skilled worker, a chemist, or  physician can. Similarly, a farmer, a worker, a teacher, and many a type of businessman can try to practice love without ceasing to function economically. Even if one recognizes the principle of capitalism as being incompatible with the principle of love, one must admit that ‘capitalism’ is in itself a complex and constantly changing structure which still permits of a good deal of non-conformity and of personal latitude.

     In saying this, however, I do not wish to imply that we can expect the present social system to continue indefinitely, and at the same time to hope for the realization of the ideal of love for one’s brother. People capable of love, under the present system, are necessarily exceptions; love is by necessity a marginal phenomenon in present-day Western society. Not so much because many occupations would not permit of a loving attitude, but because the spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself successfully against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon…Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton–well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature. Indeed, to speak of love is not ‘preaching,’ for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need in every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean that it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.”

And here we have the only and best reasonable faith. And it encompasses all the expressions of the human condition,  the very best of those expressions: the ones free of fear.

Erich Fromm is probably my biggest hero of the soul. I’d love to go back in time and beg he find a way to make sure his legacy heal our world today. But as it turns out, the legacy is ancient and hard-wired into the marrow of what it is to be human. We’re truly capable of making love, no matter our ethnicity, our citizenry or our spiritual proclivities. The river of a sustenance eternal, defying every exclusive claim by philosophical and religious dogma, flows through the soul of humanity.  We’re long overdue on the only worthwhile restoration. . .

There Is A River . . .
There Is A River . . .

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Open Doors, College and The God-Gut

Yesterday a man knocked on my door. I’d seen him going door to door in my neighborhood. I’d noted, impressed with his great greeting etiquette, that he rang the doorbell and immediately stepped off my neighbor’s front porch, waiting well out of reach of the door. It’s a pet peeve of mine, the whole door dumbness routine. You don’t knock on my door, a total stranger, and then stand smack up against the safety zone of the door as I open it to say “hello,” making a crowded and awkward collision of intention. If you know consideration, if you know thoughtfulness, you stand back and well out of the way and you show yourself fully from a distance appropriate. You give space. You make it clear that you respect a person’s home and the obviousness of your status as completely unknown. (But I’m not at all opinionated about this.) In any case, you’re doing well to get me to come to the door at all if I don’t know you. I have the same attitude about telephones. This guy had my attention. His body language was confident but something. I couldn’t pin it down. He didn’t have the dress or demeanor of a salesman. He looked like he was declaring something and his aura, his energy communicated something noble. Can a person look noble from a distance? So it seems. But I was curious. So, when my doorbell rang I chose not to pretend to be unavailable. I wanted to see if his greeting stance would be consistent. 

He waited well within range of my vision. I was impressed, wanting to ask him to give lessons to all doorbell hopefuls. I noted as I opened the door that a family van was parked in front of my home. He introduced himself and let me know he and his wife, who was waiting in the van, had been laid off from their jobs. “Is there any work we can do for whatever you might be able to give? We could paint your house number on the curb.” I asked how much he would charge, thinking it a cool coincidence that I’d just noted the lack of a house number on the curb, once again, the same morning, wishing for an easy solution. “We’ll take whatever…$10? We’re hurting.” “Well, $10 is all I have actually and that’ll be great. Thank you.” He was amazed, his head doing that shocked jerk heads do when they’re about to turn away and go down the sidewalk with a frustrated body to the next house. His wife was amazed. I was thrilled. 

The previous week I’d felt “led” to get $10 cash out. I’m paying attention to my intuition more than ever. A couple times I had opportunities to burn through the cash. But my gut said no. So, no. When he said “$10” my gut said “yes!” Sounds silly. But I don’t have cash on hand around here. Cash has a way of evaporating, proving the old adage about pennies saved and earned and not doing much for college funds or paint for house numbers on a curb. Oh wait…

Why bring this up? Why share? Why does it even matter, this whole “led” thing? It was such a wonderful feeling, to realize I’d opened the door in my heart before I opened the door literally. When I saved the $10, I was preparing for that moment without any truly logical proof of a great reason to do so. Intuition is such nourishing goodness. It, when carried through on the wings of “happenstance,” fills the soul with appreciation, thankfulness. Intuition thrives on hope and hope thrives sometimes when it makes very little sense. We all need hope. And courage. Courage to risk the seeming loss of face for trusting a process that has no hard and fast guarantees. 

Knock on doors? Ask if you can do any house or yard work? Go door to door in your Dodge Caravan and point to your wife and stand there and declare shamelessly your need? Get $10 out for a gut feeling and hoard it like some old maid miser? I don’t do cash. I don’t do old maid miser. Do I? Say it isn’t so. No, it isn’t. If cash sits stashed in my purse, it’s gone as soon as a child has a wish. And that is often and fun! 

But I have my house number on the curb now. Had I not had the $10, I wouldn’t. Had I not noted the sense of being “led” it would’ve been gone by the time my doorbell rang. And he’d not have had a surprising $10 moment. Besides, I found another dollar. He and his wife got $11 for the work. I wanted to give them a meal and jobs. You know what I appreciated more than numbers on a curb? The brief conversing with the couple, the firm handshake and receiving a verbal blessing: “God bless you.” I’ll take God’s blessing any day. 

That’s the other thing. Much like an odd appearance on my front step complete with thoughtful regard for my boundaries, I’m discovering the emergence in my soul of a new appreciation for the mother and father heart of God, a God I began to give up on 10 years ago. I don’t really know this God though. S/he is not insisting on any religion or proof of existence. She wants to iron out details and make things new and paint numbers out of the blue. He wants to affirm hope and make a way where there seems not to be one. 

My gut is telling me the timing couldn’t be better. And it was a perfect prelude to my walk across campus to pay, in person, for the fall semester of my second year of college at the age of 41. A 22 year gap in education (formal, that is!) found tremendous renewal today. There was no way I was going to do the payment over the phone. This had to be done in person, with son by my side. I wasn’t going to NOT go to school this fall though every fact and figure said otherwise. As it turns out, life responded with timely provision – just enough and at just the right moment. 

I like details. And I like how life affirms us when we decide to dance with hope and courage. It births a nobility in the mean streets of loss and opens doors for all of us.

jruthkelly8 Comments

Paradise Found . . .

Life is good. Between the falls and fasts, feasts and laughter there are 3 children and more joy than I expected in such simplicity. I don’t understand the naysayers declaring my boys would not want to hug me in public (or otherwise) once they reached a certain age. They were wrong. I’m accosted on a daily basis. And when I do the accosting, it’s met with the sweetest welcome. My daughter spent hours repairing my favorite purse yesterday on the tailend of a weekend of standing watch over my drugged and bruised frame – at her insistence and with pleasure. And this was her second weekend of taking care. I’ve been that flattened by falls and extractions! The highlight of our day unfolded in my room in a pile of beautiful dresses and garments handmade by my mom too many moons ago. Marion got to pour her own light into their threads. Some things MUST be kept, if only to see the pleasure. The value is anything but practical.

And all of it bowls me over. Yes, it’s been painful. But has anyone else noticed? This is heaven. This and the myriad wonders ’round the bend. Why would we seek for a beyond, a tide to come, to bring reason to pain or loss when the only reason to anything is that we can make a feast of the moment in love, with our works, with our sewing, our hugging, our tending. It’s the guarantee of a heaven that creates a stupor of apathy, of self-deception posing comfort for losses, losses nothing, not one thing can justify. There is no such thing as compensation for any one thing. As if(!), as if it were possible.

There is only what is priceless now.

And the long walk on the beach with one of your big-hearted sons in tidal pools telling time, marking paradise for the richest paupers poising in the sand, making eternity drip drop stop and wait, ebb and flow at our feet. . .

Meet Me By The Water
Meet Me By The Water

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As the Acorn Conveys an Oak…

“The whole purpose of the symbol and the mythos, which is the system of symbols, is to lead us to God himself, just as the purpose of language is to convey meaning and not mere words. God–Meaning alike of the universe and the mythos–is alive; like wind, like moving waters, like fire, he cannot be grasped in some rigid form. Thus the symbolic form conveys the life of God as the acorn conveys an oak. In time, if the acorn is alive, its shell will burst; the living tree will grow out of it, and refuse to be enclosed in a shell any more. Likewise, God gives his life to men in symbols and sacraments, but if that life is to be truly lively, it will not stay confined in those forms or in any others. It will use forms; it will express itself in forms; but it will not be held in forms.”

Alan Watts – Behold the Spirit

The beauty of this truth expressed here lies in the reality of dynamic possibility. Each person can take from what s/he feels of, thinks of and experiences of God or even simply hopes to experience and from those rich layers gestate a relationship with the Divine.

The work of weeding out the toxic threads provided by misguided spiritual leaders is paramount to a truly authentic walk with Spirit. And at some point the idea of “with” fades as the life as separate from God becomes more and more inconceivable. A steady path to that point is one of consistent effort, and of awareness of self, recognition of cultural influences and gender-focused obstructions.

Some of us have to run in the direction of the devil for a season in order to get a feel for where we stand in our hearts and minds, where we stand with “god” and without “god” and in order to determine what of previously held beliefs have dismantled vital soulful being. An example of the many possible considerations poses itself in this question: How did a masculine god-view damage your sense of the empowered woman?

The truth is: we are not and never have been separate from the Divine or from love and after a while we recognize there is no distinction between those two.

jruthkelly © 2008, 2009

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