The older I get the more I realize how flimsy love can be in some relationships. And how ironically stalwart, solid in others and some just relentless, regardless of how inconvenient, unconventional and even mostly unavailable. I’ve left my marriage but the love is there for us both to be human (flawed), helpful (magnanimous) and flexible (willing to bend when it will help all of us). We aren’t married but, we’re married to the clean up of leftover messes and the nurturing of ongoing commitments. I’ve witnessed and been witnessed, all the worst colors of the bad and the ugly. And there’s not any petty stomping off like scared children on the playground way back in the mean streets of “elementary” school. It’s the same with my relationships with others – love full. But too few, in terms of solid, lasting maturity in relating. I look in the mirror and wonder why. I realize there are some things I’m just not going to tolerate, like being misrepresented intentionally – hence the loss of a “friend” I dearly loved last year and the resulting storm of lost connections because of the poison. And the year before? A friend of decades had no stomach for my lack of stomach for another turn of stomping on things precious, ironically. I wasn’t allowed to be human and so, no words for 2 years now. No vocal words, just those messages most safe, via social media and some texts. But I’m definitely out because I wasn’t able to do another dance with confusion in that particular long bond. I shake my head thinking of the many roundy rounds I’ve been through with confusion in another relationship. And some confusing rounds I instigated too. The love is still there. There’s no stomping away. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. But I try to make sense of it. Then there are those who are just lost in a sea of indignation because in spite of having unsuccessfully attempted to help them while being in the midst of some of my own surreal schedule and scary health challenges, I didn’t pull off the paint job. I scratch my head. This? This is love? These ridiculous missteps scattering people and creating twisted piles of “logic” like “I don’t have to say I’m sorry if I’m not sorry.” I want to say “Oh, really? Duh. Congratulations on knowing how no one makes you do a damn thing you don’t wanna. Congratulations on not feeling sorrow over loss. Congratulations on finding a shiny badge for that.”
And that is where I am after the last round of poetry and river song, somewhere between remembering the vibe of love and wondering why it has to be so randomly seemingly absent at times most critical. And why my own flaws can’t be less tiring, troublesome and hurtful. There are times when it truly feels like all the universe is waiting for is that one misstep or missed step and slam. But see now I’m whining. And I don’t do that if I can possibly help it but today, mostly, I would like to feel less affected by loss and more able to put on that shiny badge everyone else is so damn proud of.
my feet find me here
on soil and dirt speaking some
long, unending drum
song sung before all
was lost to progress killing
the unfolding feel
of soul from earth revealing
love’s eternal work.
somehow the dance moves
me beyond the fall and fear,
bounty awaiting.
mind kneels to feel
and naked knowing births earth’s
song from depths ancient.
take me always back
to the animal and sage,
my feet drinking all
those rivers erupting earth’s
resonating love.
” … you start to go for something deeper. You start to go to meet another human being in truth. And truth is scary. Truth has bad breath at times; truth is boring; truth burns the food; truth is all the stuff. Truth has anger; truth has all of it. And you stay in it and you keep working with it and you keep opening to it and you keep deepening it.” Ram Dass (on soul mates and love)
What is life saying to you? Do you hear the melody beneath all the noise? Some melodies are a little more comical than others. I awoke yesterday with a song floating through my head, one I wouldn’t click to listen to or go around the corner or into a next room to bother to hear. I don’t like the musician’s style, etc. But in spite of that and in spite of not having heard the song in what…? Decades? There it was. “I love a rainy night…” by Eddie…Rabbit. Maybe it’s the rabbits hopping through my yard almost every day now, sometimes sprawled out in the grass, with their back legs spread out behind them, big floppy ears down, eyes brown and wide. Does Eddie Rabbit have brown eyes? Is he still alive? No, I just Googled him. He’s not alive. Ok, he’s faded into or burst vibrantly onto/into the next expression of love. But we don’t know him as alive. But I digress and chase rabbits.
What’s the point in the brain hurling up a song I haven’t heard and wasn’t crazy about…? I do like the one line: I love a rainy night. Oh and “And I love you too…” but the tune? It’s definitely sweet. Just not my cup of tea.
Much later that day, it rained, torrential, before the sun set, before the afternoon had even succumbed to the inevitable fade… and then into the night and the song came drifting back in. I couldn’t help but laugh. Was it just a coincidence? Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on where you stand and what you believe. Lately, I believe more and more in the purpose of “things” … “things” like stubbed toes, a car almost stolen and all the resulting collisions with other people and events, events we try to fathom as indicating something “good” or “bad” about us or others but… when we let go of having to judge the “goodness” of a situation, we find something deeper, especially if we have open hearts. What is life saying to me?
the rainy nights
the blooming colors
the crisis of meaning a boy has when he’s 12
the endless “coincidental” goings on in a 24 hour period
What do I hear? I hear a universe inviting us to dance. Roll with the ridiculous… shrug off the meanies… and go ahead and love the rainy night.
Something deep is at work. Something bigger than us (love) orchestrates opportunity for proving how precious are our lives… and I suppose the one question I hear every morning when I awaken, whether a song of obscure past experiences heralds the day or not, is this: “How will you make love come alive today?”
What color hums from your soul today?
What song and what dance?
How open are you to the truth of your beauty?
How willing are you to be stronger,
to be more in tune with your rhythm of love?
How much will you risk to know and be known
on levels more deeply holy human, vulnerable,
more unique than ever?
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2014
Mother’s Day conjures up the many names by which we address our mothers…
Mama (my favorite)
Mom
Mother
Ma
Mommy
to name a few.
My youngest son took to referring to me as “birthgiver.” I can’t read or say the word without chuckling. He has a flair for the dramatic and while he doesn’t literally call me that very often, it’s memorialized on his iPod. He receives texts from “birthgiver.” And then there’s “momnoms…” one of the often-used nicknames my middle son loves. I can’t decide which I like better. It’s a spin off from “nom nom” and appropriate, I’m thinking.
We mamas give birth, are consumed – some of us literally giving sustenance from our own bodies – and then our schedules, our energy, the old identity all of it consumed as we watch our children grow from adoring little creatures to sometimes scornful boundary-bucking beauties. And it is, all of it, beautiful. Ok, most of it.
For obvious reasons, the phrase “birthgiver” hit me today as I looked over pictures from way back before my own mama gave birth to me, to my life…
My beautiful Mama…
And as I reflect on mamas and life and birth and giving and consuming it strikes me how we are, all of us, capable of becoming birthgivers. I think of at least one man when that word hits my brain. So many give birth to offspring of the soul, nurturing, conjuring and calling forth dormant aspects of our personalities, our potential. It’s a beautiful truth.
My own children have birthed me in ways no others in this world, in this lifetime, can ever lay claim to… My own Mama has gifted me with a bounty of love-awareness no hiccup in our relationship can ever destroy. She is a beauty, inside and out.
j. ruth kelly, 2014, all rights reserved
And then there is the sense of a dance eternal, of a weaving and woven tapestry reaching back into fields and lifetimes centuries back…so often I have thanked my children for finding me, for choosing me to be their birthgiver. For that is what we are here for, all of us. We’re here to give birth to each other by our love and support, our encouragement and courage in truth with each other. We can choose what we allow and what we refuse to birth. Such a beautiful handiwork we can, each one of us, make of our lives and of our interactions with each other in love.
It’s an especially wonderful gift to be able to receive from those we are supposedly “in charge” of, to receive on levels that nurtures their awareness that they, too, give birth and especially that they give birth to vital parts of our own souls … just. by. being. And especially by being encouraged to question everything.
So here’s to all of the birthgivers out there and the momnom yummy folk who have nurtured soul, encouraged confidence and facilitated independence… we are all grateful for the dance.
Four packed tightly under covers…eight feet gifting each other with warmth, one pair seeking another less warm, giving kind remedy; sharing space tangled up in an attic bedroom with no power but two candles and giggles and then sweet sleep in a hushed daylight filled with ice. Soft snores after a breakfast too big except for nothing else to do in a town coated in winter’s grasp.
j. ruth kelly, 2014, all rights reserved
Then firelight and stove top sustenance, candles lit all over a house bathed mostly in shadow and cold but oh so warm. Games and face time, firewood and laughter, gathered ice for coolers salvaging what we can. Tallulah River stone soup for feet unaccompanied, gathering hot river gems up in cloth to carry up to bed, settling in for a night of no heat.
And.
A renewed, stark, startling awareness of what conveniences pilfer,
their insipid gain robbing us of something only an ice storm can bring…
connection more profoundly felt, reliance more sweetly known.
j. ruth kelly, 2014, all rights reserved
Face time… firelight…
turning to the earth for protection…
ingenuity…
appreciation for life’s turns less convenient
reminding us of treasure sometimes lost
in what we understand as wealth.
Maybe the earth conspires to remind us how vulnerable we are, both in our advancements and without them. And without our bonds of love, our shared space and renewed survival ability, we would wilt under a perpetually shining sun.
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2014
Either way, there’s nothing like the pleasure of finding your kids will make, not complaint, but fun in the face of one more dance with winter’s whimsy.
J. Ruth Kelly 