drop the (finite) story

Text taken from 'Outlaw Magic 101' By Carolyn Elliott

Thoughts on light & dark, Psalms 149 & how we really can not get it wrong

CAN I GO ANYWHERE APART FROM YOUR SPIRIT? 

Is there anywhere I can go 

to escape 

your watchful presence

IF I go up to heaven

YOU ARE THERE

If I make my bed

in the realm of the dead

You ARE THERE

If I ride on the wings of the morning 

YOU ARE THERE

If I make my home in isolated parts of the ocean

Even then you will be there to guide me

Your right hand will embrace me

YOU ARE ALWAYS RIGHT THERE

Even if I am afraid 

You can see in the dark, for it is not dark to

Your eyes. For You the night is just as bright as

the day. 

Darkness and light are the same to

Your eyes

____________________________________________________

 

As I worked on these illustrations over the last week or so I found them covering my heart. Working on the concept of light and darkness, the illustrations took on meaning for my internal work. And as I went through a week of soulful, heavy internal work (which over the past several years feels like a nonstop process of excavation) I was comforted.
We really can not get it wrong, can we?


If we get it 'wrong' by hiding. He sees.
If we get it 'wrong' in our attempts to get it 'right'. He finds us there too.
If we hide in the deepest darkest places of our hearts. He is there.
If we hide in the 'heaven' of 'being good'. He uncovers us.
He holds us in our shame and tells us we are free.


Shame has no power. He nullifies & makes trivial our shame filled voices.
Because either way... if we acted out or we never acted... it is ultimately meeting love square in the center of ourselves where we find true, deep abiding love. A love that seeks us, uncomfortably.  

My heart has had such deep hidden places that I kept 'light safe and sealed shut' from everyone, including God.
I have been so 'good' that I was lost in being something that God never asked me to be.
I have followed the 'rules' only to realize that was an attempt to hide too.
I tucked away whole parts of my identity and told them to be quiet & not to come out.


He found me every time.
And this process, is life.
We can not get it wrong.

Wake up

wake up, child

look up from your screen life

set your eyes, peripheral  

towards the heaven right here  

until you have fully awakened 

use other senses

rubbing eyes, bleary

grow accustomed 

to new site

do not worry 

splash water on your cheeks, child

colorless, odorless 

vapor serves kingdom, inexaustible

each molecule holds you 

coefficient 

if only you'll see

at first all you'll feel is 

paralysis' painful spasm 

this is just the slap of living life, child

observe

heed mind's trickery

but don't let it lull you 

don't be tempted to numb cognizant pain

revisit it all, child

connect each moment

trust this cohesion

it all is gathered here 

for you

use this moment as teacher 

when the outside evades you 

go deeper inside 

then, from depth, sing out  'awake my soul'

croon with your full power, child 

it's about time your voice is trusted 

now sing! 

What can you do?

When you create a life

That you can not possibly fit into.
What can you do?

Other than change,
Everything.

More Than Myself by Anne Sexton

Not that it was beautiful,

but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me . . .
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It's small thing
to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself.

Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth --
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.