In my dreams, my niece is driving us down a winding road through mountainous terrain as the trees call their colors, reds mixing in with lingering greens against a pale blue celestial expanse, golden leaves, too, all of fall’s offerings whispering of crisp air, hintings of magic twinkling through the scenery. And she’s being her thoughtful self, inquiring as to whether or not I’m up for her mind ramblings. Of course, I am. Somehow I manage to respond despite the fullness of color and feltness of beckonings from mountains and trees calling me. And she begins to speak as the yellowest vibrance reaches my eyes. I remember my heart breathing a sigh of kinship known, of finding home in the expression of another soul, of one so alive with wisdom and curiosity sublime.
Then we’re seated across from each other in the daylight, outside once again. But wait, were we outside while in the car? That is exactly how it felt. And our conversation continues. Would that I could reproduce the words, but what is communicated reaches deeply into my moment even now as I reflect, as the dog yawns loudly in the next room, as music flows softly into my ears and the door opens, leash clasps rattling the usual greeting with Apollo’s clicking nails advancing on the day. In my dream, my niece’s spirit reaches depths of me so accustomed to being alone the words to convey such communion don’t exist. She gave me snippets of herself, layers of our ease with each other and strands of eternal unity at once tailor-made for all humanity yet uniquely spun and weaving, woven into my own tapestry of comprehension and creation, of quiet and fullness. She was being with, being with herself as she shared of herself and in so being, with me, imparting a potent stillness within myself that opened my heart and arranged my mind in a peaceful reception of grace, of beauty, and of both our bond and of myself. And of the world.
And on that energy, with such fullness, I awoke to the dawn. Sitting with the images, sifting through their import, my heart feels our union healing, restoring layers of my own curiosity and my own wisdom that were not so much lost as they were jumbled and confused by my explorations and work of healing, finding memories so jagged and dark that the effort to reclaim the little girl drowning there eclipsed my sense of life’s song, and of synchronicities calling us all home to the within of the mother and father heart of God, the depths of the lover heart of that same divinity basking, emanating wholeness. And a ride in a car along a curve-rich roadway with an ancient soul I’ve so often known, lifetime after lifetime, transports me both home and onward into the dance of knowing and creating deeper meaning from life’s many and often overwhelming reckonings. I am stilled and moved, enriched and hungry, hungrier than I’ve been in a while now, the sort of hunger that opens the senses, digs out the ears of my heart and mind, my soul resonating fullness reaching for the stars, the moon.
And as I shifted in my bed before rising, the call of a train rumbled into my reverie, a hand extending through residual dark as it slowly retreated in the dawn of a new day. Trains have always bellowed out their hellos to me in the night. I’ve claimed them as a kinship, as a reminder of my union with everyone in this beautiful and daunting world. Their unique and almost shrill insistence that I am not alone reminded me, as I nestled in the warmth of morning, of how sweetly life’s details may reach us if we’re gifted with the connections and unions most nourishing, friendships so often encouraging us to hold on in love, to reach out with hope and to rest into the beauty of being who we are despite all the memories and goings on that might scare us away from our strengths and from the truth of our wholeness in love.
Where would I be today, every day, without the love healing my most ravaged layers of being? Each new day confirms for me, particularly as I traverse this path of healing the type of wounds, rape wounds, so often disabling, so often literally wrecking lives, each second confirms I am a miracle moving through space and time, that the divine has stalked me nearly constantly or I would be dead. I know it as surely as I hear the call of birds in the morning and the sound of trains in the darkest night. I know I would not be here if I had not been loved by forces I cannot see but know exist for all humanity to receive. But I also know that we aren’t all wired to receive such without instruction, and I know that despite the bounty of such forces, we all need the real and muscled closeness of arms around us holding us tight as we shake through the worst frights, as we pick through remnants of memories, seeking clarity. We need to be with each other, not only in spirit, but in presence, in physical closeness as we weave our lives through the mountains and greet each other across tables under trees freeing us from the lie that we’re alone.
And if we’re especially fortunate, we’ll know the beauty and love of nieces, of nephews, of daughters, of sons, of mothers and fathers chosen, of lovers and friends bestowed. We’ll know our unity with all humanity through the magical works of divine appointment, those sweet encounters in dreams and in our waking lives when we reach out to reconnect, when we hold our arms open wide to receive. And we’ll seek treasures in the night, even the darkest nights, and there we’ll find the within of heaven’s richest offerings.
I’m surprised in this moment, though I shouldn’t be, to find I’m immediately transported to the richest offering my heart conjures of all I imagine and know to be heaven’s offerings, and it is that of one man’s sacrifice. He was a man, truly. And he was divine, just as we all are. He lifted us out of the mire of defeat, of separation from the mother and father heart of God, of alienation from ourselves and from each other, of darkness so dire, of dejection wrought in destructive forces and he placed us, each one, on a path of possibility, of treading slowly but steadily towards the light. And he urged us to do the work. I find that he is not the Jesus the world at large proclaims him to be from time to time. I find that he is not the Jesus insisting we claim our Christian creeds and commitments, and so this is why I’m surprised to collide with him as I reflect here. I walked so far away from all the indoctrinated world of religion had told me he was, so far away that I thought I had maybe lost the right to even declare him. But here he is, with me, holding me up through my darkest night. And despite my letting go of Christianity’s Jesus, I realize he never left me, who he truly is could not be lost, not by any of us, whether we believe his encouragement, his most precious offering or not. Who he truly is has been confused and blurred by dogmas and doctrines, by fears and campaigns of control and greed. He calls to us from within our own most deeply human moments, those moments we take for granted and even those moments we have easily demoted to secondary status. Those moments when we might otherwise stop and take a deep breath, soaking up the stillness, noting the beating heart within. Those moments when we’re caught with a gasp and a piercing longing to be claimed by another so fully and completely that we are never the same. Those moments when we laugh deepest. All the times we reach out our hands to grasp another’s when the feelings overflow and heads meet in a benediction more blessed than Sunday’s program. Those times when we know our value is something so precious, so beyond all that our world allows at this point that we feel a howl trembling ‘neath the surface of the stoic face required to remain in the day-to-day demands.
Every howl, laugh, gasp, piercing longing, every beat of our hearts, every deep and shallow breath, rends the lie of separation when we know ourselves as the hallowed and holy humans we’ve always been despite the evidence to the contrary. And when we refuse the lie of separation from each other and from the divine. It is sometimes most difficult to see our preciousness when we’re tattered and torn by rape culture, by rape itself, by toxic gender norms and rejection of the soul of being human. We’re trying not to drown in a world full of genocide, war, poverty, oppression, violence, desperation. And all I can do is run to my dreams and to the light and the love, the love both within me and beyond me, the resonance imparting grace to take one more step and then another in the eternal now. I pray that we may all be greeted in our darkest nights with the truth of our unity in love so that we might begin a work of healing, a work I know seems impossible but I also know will be accomplished by those who hear and weep the call.
And yes, I hear a passage of scripture I cannot leave out of this expression: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
Here’s to nieces and curving roadways, rivers of healing, autumn’s leaves gracing our reverie and love’s reach relentless…
