life as i know it

"...everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

early morning blessing

It is early morning, still dark and strangely quiet in these suburban streets. The rain falls softly, slowly, steadily, a blessing for the worried and weary. The ground laps at each drop, begging for more. The corner streetlamp casts a yellow light, reflected in the shiny black pavement, a miniature pool proudly forming, its abstract, fluid form appearing as waves in the slight breeze. For one moment, standing in the rain, my mind was empty. As the rain to the earth, that emptiness was my blessing today.

Life has begun to move too fast, a race against time and growth, a marathon of responsibility. With each step, I fight for freedom and creativity, wisdom and self-nurturance. My body aches for sleep, my soul for soothing. My spirit roars in a protest of feminine wildness, but the sound is muted. I can barely hear myself anymore and it is a sound I long to hear.

I love my drive to the mountains. Once or twice each week, I awaken in the darkness and begin the journey northbound to a place where silence is broken only by Nature’s whispering. Life slows down and I am blessed by each turning shade of the leaves. The turning is slow this year, announcing its own protest against the unseasonable heat and insatiable thirst. Through amber-tinted glasses, Autumn feels closer than the naked eye allows. Through these lens, I am able to see the threads of gold woven ever so slightly, the splashes of red haphazardly painted on the canvas of the horizon. Through these lens, I am granted another moment of blessing.

I would love to say that I am reveling in many moments of such blessing, that the journey I am now walking is one in peace and balance. I would love to write those words because that is the experience I ache for in the deepest parts of my soul. But I remove the lenses, and I am faced with the suffocating pain of the world. When I reach my destination in the mountains, I spend my hours holding the pain of innocent children. Stories of violation, brutality, and the most basic forms of human betrayal hit me in tumultuous waves. I feel incompetent, helpless, lost in a maze that contains a hidden door to which no one has the key. On Thursday mornings, I am faced with more stories of pain, teachings on grief and trauma that brush too closely against the fragile fabric of my own memories. The afternoon discussions of oppression leave me in a state of defiance followed by exhaustion. I am learning more than I could have ever imagined and yet that learning requires tremendous self-sacrifice.

It is time to venture northbound again. Daylight is slowly creeping into the corners of another long day. The pain of the world awaits, as does the persistence to battle the feelings of anger and hopelessness lingering beneath the surface. Another day, another opportunity. I am thankful for Nature’s reprieve and my own moments of blessing.

2 Comments:

At 6:35 AM, Blogger bella said...

To have the eyes to see any blessing, in the form it chooses to come, is a gift.
I am struck by how raw it all is, like living without skin, no barrier to protect and hide behind. And yet what I hear in these words of yours is that, though exhausted and worn down, that you have opened to the vulnerability and horror of such trauma and in the process opened to all of life, even the turning of colors as summer becomes fall.
I think you are brave.

 
At 7:21 AM, Blogger Jessie said...

Oh, my sweet friend. This is so incredibly intense. It sounds as though it has elements of both beauty and pain and I hope that you will soon find a better balance between the two. You are an incredible woman with a very kind and sensitive heart--that is why you feel all of this so deeply. But that sensitive heart of yours is also what makes you so good at what you do.

I can't wait until your done with school so that you can finally slow down, even a little. I hope that you will find a little mountain cabin of your own and perhaps even open up your own practice. I hope for you a life filled with peace and a feeling of fulfillment. It will come, my dear. It will come.

I love you. You have such an amazing spirit. Please remember that, even in the toughest of times.

big hugs,
j.

 

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