maybe these trails lead
somewhere deep within love’s soul
where a lil girl leaps
and heart plays freely
skipping along her power
and the trees sing sight
faeries’ smiles light paths
as eternal youth blossoms
from within time’s keep
and a woman’s face
turns to decades trailing life
her roots finding gold
for in these woods, we’re never old
Words fail today for many reasons but mostly because our beloved Naji passed after 19 years on this planet. He has anchored and nourished our family in as much time. And we are grateful. It has been particularly challenging since he decided to sprint towards the finish line as soon as I left town. He knew. This is what the dying do. They wait until you can’t cling another second because you’re otherwise preoccupied. And they leave. We had to assist his passing and it was attended beautifully by Naji’s beloved Marion, eldest of our family. She held him and held herself together while he quietly and peacefully slept his last.
Naji is felt more powerfully today than I’ve felt him in a couple of years. He’s coming through as happy, relieved, grateful. He will forever anchor us as we hold to all that he gave.
When the winter stole my song, all the lovely bits of me blew away
and the night chained the dirt of my soul to the earth,
a forest of dead leaves and berries cloaked my blood.
So I wailed into the mire, a sort of siren sob for ice and snow, but no.
The season remained anchored to an epoch, bored by all my ire
and, instead of relenting, carved notches in my throat,
binding my voice to memories of long ago, whispering secrets stored in lifetimes past.
And so I listened.
And the notches cut deep, freeing waters dank and tired.
They ran in rivulets down my neck and into the valley hardened by hope’s abortions,
flooded all the flotsam jamming up my flow and washed old corpses out to sea.
And I listened more
as the ice and snow melted down into my core, warmed by embers unseen.
Then a new song gripped the heart of every screenplay refusing tRuth,
wringing out the lies, peeling back the armor ancient,
fucking the mindlessness out of every habitual, knee-jerk bullshit
reactionary presentation.
Stripped, disintegrating but the truest hum emanating.
Out past the dirt and mire, through the cracks in my grave…
a harvest calls,
a song is freed,
and these feet remember the dance.
witnesses in time
among the lines’ flowing sighs
eternal love vibes
haphazardly stood,
our stories telling fluid
crooked mystery
Take me, every ounce of this flesh and bone, pulse and blood of being, down that road,
that road long avoided, long ignored. Take me down that road, past all the detour signs and the “do not enter” and “wrong way” warnings. In the night, we journey. Past the sleeping towns and the slumbering souls barely breathing, we ride. All angst aside, all in, all gone on oppression, take me down that forgotten highway where only my body’s direction may lead as my soul receives and gives, leads and follows on a path of ancient knowing.
You leap beyond all
despair and hopeless falling.
Fiery woman, live;
no spire reaches
past your own sacred lightning,
flaring out fierce love.
Stomp and squeal delight
against a night of constant
yearning. Your love’s dance
blurs us past façades,
awakens all our hoping
towards sun’s warm call.
“May” is one of my daughter’s nicknames. On this day, pictured here as blurred trees and a church held steadfast against our movement, Marion drove us around to see some of the more lovely parts of Pittsburgh. Our trip to see her began with her trademark spontaneity and abandon when we drove up to her home. She leapt up and out the front door into the 1am cold night air and squealed with joy and then down the stairs, doing little run/skip/dance moves out into the street to reach into my car for a huge hug. And that is the best of the “Church of May.” She reveals, at her most fiercely loving moments, what we’re all made of and what we’re all here for … no matter how dark the time. We are the sacred, spiritual, divine-as-love.
I falter, from time to time (to time), tripping up on the “why” of things that happen to me and to my loved ones. The arrogance, ultimately, of this venture tells on me. There are so very many factors and variables and layers of realities we cannot fathom that come into play or intersect with our lives. The most we can do is accept any evidence of our own contribution to anything destructive, or our own patterns of self/other sabotage or any number of wicked twists of the internal landscape. And then? We grow, become more aware. And then?
We let go. Not all events in our lives, not all phases or past hardships can even withstand or succumb to reason…even after we have noted our contributions (even if we weren’t necessarily the cause!). Our value is so much more than any reasoning could ultimately affirm. Moving on and embracing just how much is truly unfathomable … this is key. We can still make a handiwork of our challenges. We can artfully embody love within and through all the unreasonable, unfathomable goings on. I find all of this affirmed by the brilliant and wise Caroline Myss. Her Facebook page is in my newsfeed and this hit me today with a tremendous gifting of grace…
“Giving up the need to know why something has happened to you will definitely count among the most rigorous personal challenges of your life. Everything about human nature craves an explanation for why events occur as they do. Our sense of reason is more than just an attribute of the mind; it is an archetypal power that governs our capacity to ground our lives and balance the forces of chaos in the world. The power of reason connects us to the rule of law and justice, directing human behavior on that tenuous path of right and wrong. Surrendering the need to know “why” represents the release of an entire inner archetypal map, one that the ego relies on for its strategies of survival in a world we perceive as heavenly influenced by the polarities of right and wrong, good and evil. To surrender runs counter to all your instincts of protection, grounded as they are in your need for personal safety. Your unconscious fear is that to surrender is to release the force of evil in your life without the rule of good to counteract it. We tend to believe, even unconsciously, that if we do good, bad things won`t happen to us. We do not only believe that principle, but also honor and live by it. Yet healing requires you to relinquish your need for an explanation- why, for instance, you experienced a brutal betrayal, or why you must take on the arduous challenge of healing an illness or assisting a loved one who is ill. Understandably, everyone asks, ‘How am I supposed to let go of this need for reasonable explanations?'” – Caroline Myss
Embrace the unfathomable, trust yourself and unfold into life…
Yesterday turned out to be one of the longer dances with life and universal rumbling tango twirls as I focused mainly on staying steady on my toes. It was beautiful, something I would not have predicted. Exhausting. Just life, mainly. But there was this girl…
almost 18…
she was in the backseat behind me, quiet. Rolling with the latest spin in the dance of our day. Her guitar teacher hadn’t been there. Door locked. Next? We’re taking my niece somewhere. Been an emergency kind of day…
quiet. Her silence was palpable.
And then BAM, crash, slam. “Mom! You have to stop. We have to help! Call the police…” She tends to command scenes when they qualify as such, without thinking or calculation. It just happens and this half-smile grows on my face every time.
The small pickup truck in front of us went from humming a straight trail along the path ahead to quietly careening off the road with no provocation, straight for the telephone pole. Full frontal impact and resulting crunching smash. I pull into the doctor’s office parking lot adjacent to the wreck, scanning for risk of fire, seeing none. The girl in the backseat is out of the car and running towards the truck. That’s my kid. Slow down girl. Life’s dangerous. Gulp. I’m calling emergency response and she’s helping the 86 year old grandma out of the car. Someone’s grandma. Not hers. But might as well be.
They’re talking. She’s holding her hand. Then she’s taking her cell phone and calling family for her. “Hello…first off, your Grandma’s ok, ok? Everything’s fine. But…” But the truck’s not going anywhere ever again. And I’m watching the universe spin a story of instant care. Passers by have stopped and are directing traffic. My daughter is bent over, inspecting for injuries and the police, emts and firemen haven’t arrived.
I’m not needed. Except as guardian of the girl on scene and as an observer privileged to witness love unfolding. This girl wasn’t aware of the world around her. She was focused, disinterested in any attention. Behaving like someone born to respond. And I’m in awe, now the quiet one.
The official responders arrive. And they’re appreciative, not shooing the girl away, making their way around her ministrations and determining the grandma’s not injured beyond the tear-inducing shock and pain from airbags deploying.
She’s “the girl” here because I’m watching her become all she is apart from me and yet not apart from me. I’m in no hurry to say “my daughter” because this is a person the world receives apart from any realization of me and she’s a wonder I like to witness and acknowledge apart from the blinders motherhood can be. All I could do in the aftermath was sit with tears of appreciation. She’s going to be just fine, Mama.
I had to leave her there on scene. That girl. Willful. She refused to leave before the grandma’s family arrived. So, knowing her to be cell phone armed and surrounded by emergency care workers, I finished my rescue of my niece, shaking my head as I drove off. She would be where I told her to be and all would be well.
But she wasn’t. She was ok. But across the street at a radio station sitting quietly with the woman and another passerby. And that passerby sat marveling to me about that girl. She’d left to call the family again, making sure they knew where to find their grandma. I just smiled and acknowledged the wonder of a girl, fearless, instantly concerned and eager to provide comfort.
And I waited in the car. Later the girl supreme told me the grandma said she had restored her faith in young people. Youth. Girls.
But she didn’t tell me until I had nudged her, mentioned the wonder of her unfolding response myself, suggesting maybe she should consider emergency response work (gulp). She had little to say. Mostly quiet again. Except to let me know that one thing about restoring faith.
Sometimes the universe puts us into these amazing twirling dance days of happenings orchestrated for the sole purpose of that one thing…to slam us into an appointment with faith.
Imagine that. And a girl. She makes my heart sing.
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”
Quote by biographer Agnes de Mille in “Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham”
The world experienced a unique expression of vitality in the active life of someone I loved from a young age. And sometimes I circle ’round and ’round the conundrum in my mind created by the somewhat immature conflict over why it is I can be so very glad he did what he did when I don’t share in the basic premise of his beliefs, that we have all sinned and fallen short. But I land on this quote and find the conundrum is only in my mind.
The soul makes sense no rational thought can fully comprehend.
The one who had such a profound effect on many, and died this past Friday, was very much a “Christ-in-you,” deeply spiritual person. but oftentimes with an undercurrent of Zen flow. John was a highly believing inspiration. And it was, sometimes, a challenge to fathom that combination of Zen Christ-likeness. And in retrospect, I cannot fathom except through this quote.
“There is a vitality. A life force. A quickening.”
And in this one man, it was contagious. It came through and was received by many as a call to Christ. And when I walked away from what I had embraced of the semi-fundie world I formerly resided, that which came through was not completely lost. Love remained. Acceptance remained. The same soulful transaction took place but my “receptors” had changed. This is not true of everyone I’ve encountered from my past life. Their channels are clogged with judgement and fear. His were not.
We often, if not always, translate who we are by the sometimes ancient, sometimes recent code of dependency, particularly dependency on beliefs or thoughts we are either intentionally or unintentionally embracing. And in that translation, the world either rejects or embraces us. Or is ambivalent. John mostly experienced hearty acceptance and he embodied what is best known of Christ, beyond the ultimate sacrifice. He loved regardless of ________, which is to say, he loved no matter what your story might be.
I have no stomach for sin-fixation or a basic premise of need for a savior. Our savior did a work and it’s on us to continue that work. But in the celebration of John’s life, the undeniable reality shines through all the confusing mental riddles. He translated the life force we all partake of and that translation imparted hope, strength, a desire to live outside of fear and in love. Both in and out of the realms of semi-fundie confusion. He said often “You are the Your Name Here expression of Jesus.” And many were blown away by it. It set aside the “WWJD” fixation and required a personal expression of Christ. In my view, both in and out of that particular flavor of Christianity, it is the purest form of Christian practice, evoking the highest possible walk of integrity within the structure of that religion and it has my highest regard.
And so today I came across this quote again from a source supreme. And I found peace in the words not because they solved the riddle as much as because they pointed me to the reality of soul, of life force and of how it is we can receive the best from those we may not totally agree with and we can receive because there is that life force nourishing us within and beyond all belief systems.
“Keep the channel open.” He was able to keep the channel open through his faith in Christ. And not many, in and out of Christianity, have found a way to keep that channel open. His life and passing into the next grand adventure reminds me that we don’t know what we think we know. “Christianity is bad because it…” The truth is, when we are sick within, whatever we embrace will be corrupted by that sickness until we face it, heal it and translate life anew. Whether we’re heavy into our atheism or our religion or…
Keep the channel open…accept who you are without denying how you’ve fallen short (we all do, whether we believe there’s this thing called “sin” or not) and…
stay in love.
