uprooted

it's the last day. thank God! because i'm done. i'm ready to begin again. the thing about being linear, limited by time, is that time matters. dates matter.  we mark our lives with them. like flags or buoys in our life. we can have newness. we can begin. 

there was a reading today in the celtic book of prayer, from Edith Schaeffer, a founder of l'abri fellowship, that resonated with me.

a completely new work … would never have been possible if we had not been uprooted completely in every way, and if in that uprooting we had not decided to pray for God’s solution and leading every step of the path as it wound through unknown territory.

i get this. the unknownness, the uprooting.  and i'm ready for a completely new work. i'm hopeful, eager. actually i'm more than hopeful, i'm anticipating, because this is what God promises. and often our greatest works, grow out of the uprooting, the struggle.  out of our comfort zone, in our chaos, God shows up with grace and mercy. and if we are quiet and patient and listening, if we can sit still and suspend our ideas and let go of our plans, if we can trust and turn it over, if we can wait, if we can be led, beautiful big things happen.

this is what i want.  to fill my life and my days doing the work that my story has led me to do.  and i don't want to miss out on what could be amazing because i'm too busy or too scared or too comfortable or too uncomfortable to pay attention. i want to walk through the unknown territory, on the winding path, led by the One who knows the way.  i want to ring as a bell in the darkness and grow stronger and embrace the change. i want to be the wine and the mystery and the meaning, and say: i flow, and speak: i am.

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

Maria Rainer Rilke

landing at the beginning

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. 
                  T. S. Eliot "Little Gidding"


there is something about this- our endings and our beginnings and how they are related and where we find ourselves. and about exploration internally and externally. 

it is almost the end of the year. the beginning of another. the world moves and spins so quickly now, faster with each year. i am here, or there, or elsewhere in my beginning.

i am here in new england, the place of my beginnings, a cold december night 44 years ago, my birth organized- orchestrated so my father could be present. my squeezing out was squeezed in between on-call schedules.  my birth, like all births everywhere, organized and orchestrated by the Divine One who knows the number of hairs on my head, the number of my days, and how my days will be spent- before even one of them began. 

God is so far ahead of us. i can't imagine knowing what my children's days will be like- it would be too much- today is enough. if i knew of their suffering, what lay ahead of them, i think i would do anything in my power, which isn't actually much at all, to prevent it.  to save them from it. to avoid it. protect from it. take an alternative route, or at the very least, prepare for it.  but God allows it.  it's part of our journey, it's part of our exploration. it's even essential to get where we are going.  we can live very deeply inside, or we can live superficially, either way, we are still breathing and eating and sleeping and even loving. but real searching, real seeking, real exploration, if we are willing to go there- brings us deeper and closer to God and the warmth and truth that is there- closer to complete love.  that path will have suffering, i'm pretty sure it's a guarantee.

we spend a lot of time and money on running from our suffering. and if we can't out run it, we try to push it away or ignore it.  we don't want to feel it and we certainly don't want it to stick around for long and we really don't want to share it.  it reveals our nakedness. it shows our wounds and our vulnerability- those things that we are good at pretending no one else feels- those things we think we should hide because we are alone in them.  but we are not.  we all share it, we all know what it feels like, even Jesus knows- because real love, is feeling it and knowing it and staying with people who are in it.

maybe the place where we end, is the place with in ourselves where we began, before the world took bites out of us.  before we fell and scrapped up our knees and took bangs on our heart, and drummed things into our minds- false things, about who we think we are and who we think others are and who we think God is.

i want to return to there.  i want to take what is given to me on the path- to embrace it, even if it's uncomfortable or painful or feels like it's too much. i want to be available, to be aware of what i'm feeling and seeing and coming to know. i want to show up for myself with compassion and gentleness. i want to be real, authentic, and whole and open.

maybe these years, however many we have, is an exploration that leads us home to that safe internal place where we started from- before life happened.  and maybe from that place of centering, of stillness, of experiencing the Love that made us, we can then reach out for each other. 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
                                      T.S. Eliot East Coker