(Bruce Springsteen, The Promise)
When a wave of emptiness sweeps over your soul there is
little to do to assuage the ache of the void and little to do to regain the
breath of life to revive your soul…
"He had discovered that grief did not dim with time; it
was instead a volatile state of being."
~ Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The ache of a loss does not go away entirely. It merely
diminishes, fades in and out of perceptibility. At times it is triggered by
something; a memory, a scent, a song, a photograph. Then emotions and feelings
and the gravitas of experiences rise to be known again bringing with them all
you thought you had forgotten somewhere in the past. Sometimes, if you are
stronger in a given moment you let the ache wash over you and move on with little
damage to your soul. While at other times when you are weak, you let the ache
weigh you down. In the weak hours you reach for a bottle or pills or a lover to
distract and assuage the pain - to help you make it through the night. To know
these things, to be these things, is to be human. And so it is human to live
again, to dare again, to risk again, to love again.
It comes out of
nowhere
An ache for
epistemological mooring
The loneliness, ennui
and isolation
Of the search
Solitary confinement
of the soul
A longing for
intellectual touch
To know and be known
Mingling minds in
conversational intercourse
Ideas bared between
sheets of thought
Vulnerable locutions
in the night
Poetic memory wrapped
in metaphor
Making the story with
two endings
Searching the
empirical forest of otherness
To encounter more
than an abstraction
To touch, taste and
feel the ineffable
If only for the
briefest of moments
~~~~~~~
I will drink
To kill the ache
The only way
Not to feel pain
When numbed
I can bear to live
This will be the whimper
Rather than the bang
To end my world
~ Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
"The journey
is the accumulation of stillness. Patience. Emptiness. The union that I seek is
not of my creation. The self I have created impedes union. Stillness must be
learned, and the endless time in which I learn it is filled with doubts and desolations.
Stillness often feels like abandonment. Why isn't Spirit communicating with me?
What have I done to deserve such a stony, cold silence? How do I avoid filling
with new terrors the emptiness that terrifies me?"
~ T.S. Eliot
At
the place of the rock
I feel death (maybe I am dead)
Blowing with the wind over the water
The black worm has been burrowing into me
While I sit and stare into the horizon of
defeat
Deep it is now
As deep as I have sunk within myself
Moving with me (maybe it is me)
It devours from the inside out
Years have past
I have tried to get it out (God have I tried)
With no avail
We are becoming one
The black worm and I
It will only depart with me now
Out this world together
As the poet has written, “…not with a bang
but a whimper…”
To kill the ache
The noise in my head echoing the consumption
of my organs
Not blood of lambs or prayers of the penitent
Will hinder the dark angel’s step over the
threshold of my life
When
I and the black worm and the dark angel
Are one
Below the water and weight of the rock
The ache
That follows me
Entangles me
Surrounds me
It is me
Grafted and grown into my bones
Deep in my heart it resides
Bidding me to darkness
Grief carves a wound
in our being
With the turning of
the years
A shard of glass cuts
lines into forlorn faces
Either consumed or
transformed by our wounds
With our final breath “…rest between two notes…”
Until then…a
prolonged pause of disequilibrium
Grace in the ” …here
and there - the now and then...”
Love rains mingled
with tears of pain and joy
“There is a moment
before impact that is the last instant of things as they are. Then the visible
world explodes.”
~ Steven Galloway,
The Cellist of Sarajevo
"Deep calls to deep..."
The grayness of the sky,
The coolness of the breaking waves
The hardness of the shoreline
The nothingness in the wind
"Deep calling to deep..."
The brokenness of my being
The desolation of my soul
The hunger and emptiness in my heart
The ache of longing
The pain in sighing
"Deep calls to deep..."
“You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when you lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did you forget about us after you had flown away
Well I memorized every word you said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While you're up there just playing hard to get
You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did you ever know loneliness?
Did you ever know need
Do you remember just how long a night can get?
When you were barely holding on
And your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While you're up there just playing hard to get?
And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the one who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know
Is if you who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead
And we cannot get free of what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how you're leading me unless you've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so you've been here all along I guess
It's just your ways and you are just plain hard to get”
~ Rich Mullins, Hard To Get
"May you dream you are dreaming, in a warm soft bed
And may the voices inside you that fill you with dread
Make the sound of thousands of angels instead
Tonight where you might be laying your head..."
- Patty Griffin
(Patty Griffin, Nobody's Crying)
“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
~ Julian of Norwich
No comments:
Post a Comment