These are the pressurized years, at a time in history, rolling out like a musty carpet full of lumps and glass. How to walk in a straight line, disoriented, terrifying, desperate.
You’re sweetly committed to navigating the unknown as though your moment by moments are resting in wider trust.
What you’ll come to know is that the tightness in your shoulders is from the grip of control.
For you, control has always been about being a step ahead. A step ahead in understanding.
A step ahead in compassion. A step ahead in whatever you think will make you good.
As though being good or bright, generous or wise will give you a foothold.
You’ll come to realize that being a step ahead was never what protected you from unravelling completely.
It was always the hearts of others. It was always being able to land in the muck with your loves.
Cold, dark clay on your skin, nothing sanitized, no distance. You will miss the contact of skin so hold your babies close, take hugs when you can. Hold your thick thighs like precious animals. Your animals like gods. Time will rip attachments away from you with ruthless cruelty indifferent to your efforts. The unfair coming for each soul with no measure of justness.
Now is not the time to know what is happening, though you’re desperate for ground.
Everyone is desperate for ground. It is the time to find breath in groundlessness as it has always been. No steps ahead, but right here, inhaling, exhaling with the Earth through the soles of your feet.
Now is the time to know what the soul wants. You suffer from distortions, dear one.
Your shame is heavy with this knowing.
I’m here to tell you about what you’ve been collecting in that basket of your longings, what to keep and cook with and let fill your children’s bellies, and what will rot in the hearth.
You must examine what it means to become somebody.
Notions, you’ve collected them like shiny red apples. What is that sheen? Is it your soul’s whispers, the evolutionary impulse, connecting all things, separate and at once?
Or have you bargained for a promise?
The work is that of knowing what is a sticky veneer, lulling you to sleep in that dream where the noises are so loud, like pots and pans clanging, you can’t tell if they’re celebrating a new year or chasing off the rats. There is slumber in the noise. Noise in the slumber.
Confusion is the depths waving a flag, showing you where the entrance is to the silent chamber, where you can come home to yourself.
Come home to yourself.
There’s no control here. Nor confusion. But you’ll have eyes to see what’s in the basket of your longings. You’ll know that becoming somebody was a trick to keep you hungry. As if there’s no bounty of bread and fruit right where you are. You’ll see all the tricks to keep you hungry.
And here you’ll burn with fury. And collapse in relief.
The child in your heart will not feast on medals or praise. Nor will she grow in the shadows of martyrdom. She will become giant through the touch of extended hands.
Extend your hand. Unsanitized. We’ll wash together. Anoint each other’s feet and know that coming home to god happens in the middle. Not at the edges and not at the end.