| It is not just the recent burning of Superior, Colorado that brings me to grief. My children are fine. We had a series of miracles that left their house standing in the midst of ash and ruin, untouched, undamaged. That image reminds me of my personal life, a house in the midst of a burning world, a human being so blessed by miracles that she appears unscathed but for the deeper feelings of loss and sorrow that can’t be reconciled. Those who burned are also me. Those with Covid are also me. Those who are hungry are also me. Trees, and birds and deer, every creature, every creation is also me. I cannot wrap my head around the loss but the heart cracks open. I am invited to enter the feared and wild world of the hidden psyche. This is the tomb of all losses, all deaths, the guilt and shame of parts of me rejected, denied. I feign some normalcy, but inside, a woman dressed in black mourns and cries and calls back to life what she hid and squelched, dimming her own capacity to offer the world Her light. To be human is to struggle with sorrow, to suffer, to feel pain. Daring to have a practice that brings you to face your grief is spiritual work. Cleansing the soul and waking the numb heart is necessary for those who desire awakening, joy, peace. To touch our wounds, to speak of guilt, to share feelings in the presence of compassionate others is essential to connecting with our souls and our soul kin. Soul kin are everyone, within and without. Daring to face our darkness together brings a kind of communion and bonding in God that supersedes every party and festivity. It leads to the greater celebration of each other and the sweetest lightness of being. We are carrying so much now. Transformation is impeded by denial. Fear, grief, disappointment and broken heartedness are the norms of light workers at this time. Spiritual devotees also experience trauma, perhaps more so than those who by-pass the call. My poetry is a mindful practice of looking in, listening, feeling, and embracing as best I can, the whole divine-broken human being. It is daily bread in the midst of daily loss. It is a reverent approach to healing that reveals a golden lining beyond the shadow. The power and purpose and meaning of love is born from self-intimacy, and specifically, grief. The primal cry of the child separated from love is the call of the Christ from the cross. We acknowledge all we believed forsaken. God hears, God grieves. God Loves and we are resurrected. When grief finally comes, it has a holy face, not light, not beaming but eyes of sorrow glint with embers slowly dying. It is an ashen face of devastation. Some idol is reduced to ruble unable to ignite, to burn on nothing, to inflame. Grief is torrential like rain all over the world; a downpour that makes it hard to see or breathe. A house collapses. A city washes away. All that we thought was ours buried in the mud… I thought I understood what He meant, when He said, You build your lives on foundations of clay. I didn’t. I don’t… For a while, the denial keeps us jogging, faking fitness. Until steady damage breaks the heart apart; the earth herself qu-aches with pain, and choice appears: life or annihilation. There is something between the courage to live and the fear of dying. Could it be acceptance? I’d like to try that way but it is a way of not trying. I leave the safety of normal, greeting the overwhelmed, the anxious, the unbearable, the rejected-repressed, depressed and deprived; (How many selves has my psyche?) feeling the traumatic gravitas of ghosts, seeing and hearing and mourning my loss. Is it sick, my longing to open the tombs? Or a true experience of intimacy, the exquisite, what is it(?), beauty(?), of meeting oneself with nothing but raw faith in I-know-not-what. The tremolo of a Voice thought to be compassion, fades into silence, suspended in black, as a world-moan rises, steadily, hauntingly, the sanctified bellow of merging voices, creature and human, elemental and alien, wild and tame, spirit and flesh; a song begun in the bowels of the planet received and repeated by legions of angels; all lips pursed, our bellies opened, hearts liquefied in pooled vibration… OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO mmmmm. MaryBeth Scalice, MA.,Ed.D mbopenheart@foundationofopenhearts.org www.foundationofopenhearts.com |