Light Falls

The bright light and warmth of June is already pressing down today, giving depth to my movement through this morning. A sleepy baby brings pause to my activity. In the stillness, my memory is drawn to the luminous intersections sparkling in my heart - they are flight trails from this past week's new patterns of friendship, celebration, heartache, hard work, and gratitude.

A dear friend embraced me last night and told me I am radiating happiness these days in person and word. She's absolutely right; I know and feel it. My life is abundantly blessed and my cup continually runs over with ease, spilling out in words on a page or spoken affirmations to friends or other creative expression. I have never felt so generative. Most moments, my spirit feels like its wings are stretched in achy release with miles and miles of space to soar, the winds of possibility lifting each feather.

However, this work week was particularly trying. The subject matter of the program I've revised - a module on incarceration and prison reform - is gut-wrenching; it is impossible to forget the stories and realities of people in prison when I am "off" work. Ongoing news of my black brothers and sisters' continuous oppression evokes helplessness. My baby boy's sleep habits have been challenging - thus, my communication with my partner has been strained. I have been tossing in a sea of hormonal tides that make no sense. I have not been able to connect with friends with whom I have long wished to share time. My body is still sore from surgery. I am tired.

Listening to the drumbeat of Michael Franti's lyrical mysticism recalibrates my perspective: "It's the sound of sunshine falling down..." Even the light descends. Trees stretch to the sky. Sink down, lift up - it is the ebb and flow of a meaningful, engaged life. In one of her poems, Mary Oliver asks the ocean in despair, "What shall I do?" The ocean, she says, "in its lovely voice," replies to her, "Excuse me, I have work to do."

What I marvel at most is that a community of people have collected around me; they trace with loving fingers the lines of light that carve dark recesses and add dimension to my days. In summer's night, fireflies glow. Falling to fly, each up and down of the wing causes motion and mystery.

White Clover

My boy sits among wild strawberries and clover,
brushes the leaf clusters curiously, plucks
white wildflowers and pops the blossoms
in his mouth, sucking what I can imagine
is sweetness bunnies crave. Morning
dew dampens his plump, strong legs that are beginning
to take him places without guidance, but never
without accompaniment. The breeze combs
his flaxen curls and the trefoil greens
deepen with each longer look of fascination.

Many say God is a Holy Trinity, three Persons
in One. The clover's thin petals form tunnels
to their centers; my child waves a complex flower
like a wand. Humbled, I wonder
how anyone could number the divine
People or Plants, Places or Possibilities,
or suppose the Creator is anything apart from
the Created, creating. Later, my son climbs
into my lap and falls quickly to sleep, sighs
in contended dreams, an earthy smell
on his breath, floral crown at his feet.

Symphonic Solitudes

"Love consists of this, that two solitudes protect and touch each other."
- Rainer Marie Rilke

We heard them before we saw them: two geese flying into the lake. They soared in from the south, silhouetted against the dawn; their trumpeting honks reverberated in the amphitheater of trees. Silenced by their arrival, my husband and I observed from a swinging bench by the water as they alighted with wings that beat the air like drums.

We thought at first there were others responding with throaty sirens, so deafening were their echoes. Soon it was clear the two were solitary, raucous companions. They swam and sang their haunting calls louder and louder. The rhythmic rounds swirled in crescendo, each honk a new verse that elevated the dissonant harmony before falling quiet in the trees. We studied their sleek movement; our spirits resonated with the symphony.

The geese took turns continuing the task of bleated conversation. With each pause, they bent lithe necks to chest and threw back their beaks to ladle down the cool water. Each dip, quick and untidy, caused spilling drops to glitter. Pale auroras of mist swirled over the ripples as the geese floated as ghostly creatures in the shadowed lake. Silent humans and acrobatic birds - near in liminal love, beautifully ephemeral as the light or mist or song - bore witness to wonder.

As suddenly as they arrived, their song shifted keys and, in lyrical synchronicity, they took to the air, mist unfurling as clouds in their wake. The song faded as our attention followed them across the lake, up to treetops, past the horizon. With thoughtless and heavy breath, we wrote in the air a wordless farewell of surprise and thanks.

Two wild birds drawing close can evoke holy terror in the heart of a lone human, but inspired mystical delight in a pair seeking the deeper nature of things. Being human can feel lonely, but two humans sharing space together transforms isolation into a warm practice of protection. Trusting that each other being seeks something the other cannot fulfill is a wisdom that sanctifies individual strife.

I have heard that sighting a pair of geese is a good omen. That the solitudes of our two companionships touched gently, like wings to water or entranced hand to hand, relays a message beyond language. It is the mystery of the realm we inhabit authentically in silence. It sings as the quickened heartbeat, the animated woods, the disturbed and enlightened water, the flight above what can be seen.

Becoming

I watch you notice the bird chirping on the neighbors' air conditioning box working to nest his children in the metal vents with sticks and thread. You gasp and point, press your cheek to mine, look with me to the warbler's perch. Eye to eye, we watch his messy but deliberate process. Suddenly, he takes flight.

The eye is an imperfect instrument made adequate by aeons of messy evolution from an underwater lens to one that translates light refracted through air. Our bodies have had to compensate with generations of mutation, making this end result make sense out of practical necessity. We marvel at its complexity and precision, though we could have mended its inefficiencies had we known where we'd end up. But we didn't. We had to make our way slowly to become a foreign lifeform, swimming and dragging ourselves to land with fingerless flippers out of our aqueous atmosphere, squinting in the hazy sunlight, assessing the risk of never going back.

This moment, your soft eyelashes rest on round cheeks pressed against my empty breasts. Your breathing, my heartbeat, this relationship with you outside of my body, reminds me of the messiness of birth. More blood and effort and pain than we would have planned had we known our heads would grow so large, our pelvises would narrow, our society would make it difficult to keep well the bond between mother and child. But here we are, our rhythms syncing, the heaviness a comfort, the birdsong an ideal lullaby.

The way you throw your head back to see the moon and stars as we walk at night looks like the beginning of a back flip, motion that defies the grounding physics of gravity. The moon feels like it could rest in a hand like an orb, but its orbit dictates our internal tides. We look up at the moon looking down on a planet it doesn't know houses humans. The way you look at me in delighted puzzlement at the distant lights in darkness is the start of a lifetime of questions.

Why only five fingers and toes, and no fewer? Why does the smell of your breath make me smile? Why feathers on birds, scales on fish, skin on humans? Why sex, or pain, or laughter? Why delight in observing life? Why death, instead of living forever?

Nothing would be the same if we'd known it was becoming. Nothing would mean anything without a history, but nothing happens for a reason except that it has to happen that way for the world to get where it is going.

Our eyes are the same as the bird's nest, brown and rich, empty for holding. Your wonderment is the Earth's bedtime story, telling us what could happen if we dreamed. The mystery of what we will become is foretold in the bird's flight, is written in blood, is promised in song.

What do I know to be true?

My friend called a wisdom gathering of a few dozen women of whom she asked the question,

What do you know to be true?

~*~

What do I know to be true?

All is One. In every scale of the Universe, a complex harmony resonates. Each key flows seamlessly to the next. Allowing our vibrations to echo without alteration makes the music more beautiful, the song more complete. Clearing the plane for every melody to ring true and free makes the world more just and peaceful. Listening helps us to learn our next step.

Reality is a network of love-being. When we strip down to our most vulnerable place, we can touch bones of light, our shimmering foundation. Removing masks of pretense, shedding material comfort, relinquishing ambition, forgetting language - these are steps that move us back to the Source. Bounds of Self dissolve as we meet the deep gaze of another's eyes, the vast ocean of teeming beings, the elements forged in star bodies, the energetic swirl of galaxies and aeons.

This human life is an earthy experience of personhood that gifts us with the ability to reflect on this blissful union. Our work is to melt into the free form of love-being by living as who we are. Manifesting authentically is an essential step in the process of cosmic evolution. Being true to who we are, honest with what we understand, vulnerable with where we are growing, and loving to all Life is to remember why we exist at all.

When I remember that All is One, I honor that nothing is lost. I trust I am never alone. I envision broad possibility. I walk gently. I move gracefully. I create passionately. I love wholly.

Sacred Night

The night has always felt like sacred time. Sacred - from the Latin 'sacare,' which means cut off or set apart. When I wake in the dark and feel compelled to put the flow of my spirit wanderings to words, it is time separate from the course of days that can feel relentless. The spaciousness of a quiet and dim house blurs the edges of hours and obligations, makes me feel free to release with honesty and without worry about what I am not doing.

Although the bright sunshine charges my body, dreaming and pondering in darkness taps the well of undercurrent consciousness that waters my roots. Down, down below the surface of activity and effort is a place underground. This cave of solitude, cavernous respite, becomes a chapel for the simple ritual of connecting to myself.

Here, the inner becomes the outer. I am sometimes startled by my projections onto shadows as I navigate the physical darkness, for I assume they are as alive as my palpably present thoughts - they move like moonbeams bouncing off water onto on the walls of my inner temple. I imagine myself floating on a boat in this underground cave, light spilling from an unknown source underneath, wave patterns flickering on stalactites and crystals.

Sometimes, I meet guest-messengers here. Tonight, though, I am alone, and the task is to rest in my wakefulness. Sleep is evasive, but refreshment can come from claiming this sliver of time as a gift. I float, trailing a hand in the warm water, letting my soul be nurtured by the velvety blackness, the echoing sighs of my quiet breathing.

The confines of my cave open me to an ocean of transcendence. The crystals are stars in the firmament. The wall reflections are wave functions, frequency patterns of possibility. The light is the center of the earth, molten with energy, releasing minerals to strengthen my bones.

I am reminded of the dark sacredness I find in the daylight, as encounters with that deep place in people who do not fear the night. My companions, you are here with me. Our souls shimmer in the facets of gems and galaxies, reflecting fresh dimensions of beauty. Through the inward well, channel to the source, we swim out into the sea together. We ascend into the glittering cathedral of precious stone and insight. We rise into blackness, the cosmic horizon.

The Passion of a Wonderful World

The morning of Good Friday, my sleepy child hung on my neck and looked at me with expectant eyes, seeking a distraction from his runny nose. I looked at the gray skies out the window and, reflexively, began to sing – You are my sunshine…my only sunshine!  With a quick smile, he began to laugh and bounce.

Suddenly, an old familiar tune popped into my mind and flowed from my mouth:

I see trees of green, red roses, too,

I see them bloom for me and you

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

My son's joy prompted me to search for and play the full song. Louis Armstrong's serenade swirled us around the room as we sang and danced. The final verse arrived and, before I knew it, tears began to brim in my eyes with an unconscious recognition; I fell silent and just listened to the poignant close:

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow -

they'll learn much more than I'll ever know,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

I sighed and pulled my boy a little nearer. Nothing has brought me closer to a sense of my own mortality than becoming a mother. I have never so fiercely protected a life as I have his, and I have never valued mine so highly until I felt his intrinsic dependence on me. I have said many times that he teaches me how best to heal this world, and myself. He has already been a natural instructor in letting things go. He shows, again and again, that each day brings new possibility, that each new death yields life formerly unimaginable.

The night before, the two of us gathered with community members to honor the beginning of the Triduum. Imitating the symbolic image of servanthood shared in the story that evening, the entire church took turns sitting to have their feet washed and washing another’s feet. Because it was unscripted and simple, resonant icons began to take form as person after person enacted the ritual. Elders washed the feet of young members. Children washed their parents’ feet. Those who needed assistance nobly enacted the foot washing, slowly but surely, with patience and help. Publicly-known disagreements, disputes, and differences faded away as, sitting and resting feet in a bowl or taking up a towel and pitcher, companionship was recognized in the mutual act of grace.

My son was fast asleep; I cradled him in my arms as I sat down. The woman at my feet was a lifelong friend, the mother of my childhood playmates, someone who has washed my feet before in many ways and times. We both shed tears as she gently poured the water over my feet, then dried them. I carefully lowered my son over the bowl and she washed his feet, too. He sighed sweetly as he dreamt, held in the sacred space of being tended to without reciprocation. We embraced, and she held my sleeping baby as I turned to wash the feet of another.

The next morning, dancing to Louis Armstrong, my boy sensed I was crying. He pulled back and looked me in the eyes, softly touched my face, understood beyond understanding. Silently, he opened his mouth and pressed it to my cheek.

I see friends shaking hands, saying, ‘How do you do?’

They’re really saying, ‘I love you…’

It is a magnificent mystery, the truth that my son will see farther into the future than I; his eyes will look longer at the world than mine. I sing to, clean, feed, comfort, play with, learn from, and love this little boy...but I will not know the extent of his expansion. Although I receive bountiful gifts from our life together, the direction of energy most often feels outward and into him. But I trust that this watering of his small spirit will yield seeds, then fruit; I know that my life is meaningful because I try, in futile but dutiful ways, to leave this world more beautiful for him; I trust that when my body finally falls into eternal rest, the continued animations of his life will be as close to a personal immortality as I can imagine.

When I gathered at the church again on Good Friday evening (this time leaving my sleepy little one at home in his father’s arms), a familiar story of suffering-love was transformed. Rather than hearing a story of a man’s self-sacrifice for a new world, I heard the story of a son, loved and lost. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was Mary at the foot of the cross.

Mary, Mother, looking up at a son to whom she gave her life.

Mother, gazing at her suffering son crucified unjustly…the eyes of countless women watching their sons shot, beaten, executed, sent off to war.

Mother, holding her child close…waking with him in the morning, dancing and singing with him, feeling his wet kiss on her cheek.

Mother, living beyond what her son would see – the cruel inverse of the right destiny of parents and children.

Mother Christ, borne through a woman who had to watch her son die, then live into the mystery of continued life.

Mother Christ, alive in women across the globe who have died to their old selves to give life to their children and the children of all future generations.

I listened as, in the circle of silence, the millennia-old story shifted to a litany calling those gathered to open their hearts to the people of our planet still crucified. Suffering people – a people of Passion, which means to hurt. Compassion – the place of suffering together. Community – a place where suffering is transformed through our oneness. 

The starving, the tortured, the poor, the oppressed…Christ borne as Children deserving of restoration of dignity so that they may live into the future they have come to manifest.

I watched as two women danced around a simple, wooden cross that had traveled across Louisville earlier that day, carried by pilgrims who stopped at living stations, places representative of the injustice that still harms our human family. The women danced, and I saw them as two spirits swirling around this wonderful world, burning with flames that held the hurting, blazing with fire to heal the harm. 

There is death…and there is resurrection. Life is unfailing and resurrection prevails. This is our Passion story of Easter hope: to continue to make the world new for our children.

Sunday dawned with brilliant sunshine. The birds sang, the light drew the curtains, and my husband, child, and I basked in the relaxed freshness of Easter morning. 

Spring always returns; babies continue to be born. The light always arrives after the rainfall. Eternity comes in moments; salvation, in love.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

the bright, blessed day, the dark, sacred night,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

To my astonishment, at my in-laws' house, there was a little board book in my son’s Easter basket with a familiar title. My mother-in-law said she just knew we had to have it when she saw it. Tears again filled my eyes as, Mother and Son, we read the Passion of this wonderful world – one of brokenness and blessing, of hurting and healing, of loving so fully that, when we let go, we know we will be reborn.

…Yes, I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’