I wondered:
There is a time for heartbreak, the tilling of the soul.
God dresses as a small brown merganzer chick spending every ounce of its new life force paddling against a river’s strong early summer current. It falters, loses its advance, and surrenders its body to the river.
Oh, God, I ask, what is this lesson? What is the lesson, beyond the fact of death?
I heard:
"The lesson is simply in your response to what you saw. Lessons don’t necessarily emerge as sentences or even thoughts. Heartbreak gives birth to new worlds unimaginable beyond the womb. This is the womb: maelstrom. Drift, be blown, notice what is inescapable, hold onto nothing, for it will be torn from you in this journey.
Open your heart all the time, keep it open, never close it. The gate is marked by the curtain whose beads are your tears.”
I prayed:
Oh One Which serves through light, glowing eternally in the heavens and in my heart, bring me now into the Presence which heals, inspires, lifts and promises with intent and power to reveal and bless. Bring me now into the Self that I Am in the highest truth which I can realize at this time. Help me to expand into my most pure light aspect at this very moment, in this very place and for this specific purpose which I face right now. In return, I promise to bless all in every level of my consciousness with every act of intelligence and imagination within my consciousness. So Be It.
I know:
No matter what has gone wrong, our eyes can rejoice in the new day’s rising sun, our hearts in the burbling of our babies, in the victories of the heart and spirit in every way they come to us. Everything is needed in the healing of the self and of the world: singing, weeping, caring for our friends and even strangers, writing to our Congresspeople, meditating and praying, the making of powerful art, making casseroles, bringing medicine and support to our wounded brothers and sisters.
Rejoice. Sing. Pray. Hold each other closely and send messages of hope in every way possible. Claim the sweetness that will not melt. Name it. Send it into every space around you and listen for its homecoming.
And then I heard:
When you rise I run ahead, preparing the field with the flowers you love most, and pave your path with singing stones cool and cushion your weary feet. When you open your mouth I create melodies and poems of beauty and healing so that all of My Spirit shall find release through your willing voice and graceful form. Know that not for an instant are you not my vehicle, whose voice, dance, yearning heart and healing hands are a blessing tome in all my guises and dwellings. Know that every time you stumble I weep and laugh at my failure to have encompassed you more fully, to have informed your atoms more completely.
© Leiah Bowden 2006
