Idols and Phantoms

Everything changes.
Nothing stays the same.

That's the truth that Jen speaks out loud here.

I'm amazed at the tug of certainty, at the lengths I will go to in order to land on some conclusion, to be able to weave a story that makes sense, even if I'm aware that the knowing is only for now.

As a little girl, I would spend hours and hours reading The Picture Bible. And like all the other little girls and boys in Sunday School, I would scoff at those Israelites when they convinced Aaron to make them a golden calf because Moses had left them at the base of the mountain to commune with God.

But now I read the story with different eyes -- through eyes of compassion for the poor souls who were left without a guide for forty days and forty nights. Who could stand it, after wandering all that way from Egypt already? Even though he sent the plagues, even though he parted the sea, who was to say that God would not abandon them in the desert after all... isn't that what they grumbled amongst themselves?

Certainty is a golden calf. It's a thing that, although it will not last, is at least something I can feel and sense, that gives me comfort and lifts the burden of an unknown tomorrow.

Certainty. How much energy or or money or time have I invested trying to secure it? How much of my life have I wasted running from ambiguity?

I'm beginning to understand that it, along with peace, and ease, and a stress-free existence -- these are the idols that I bow too. They are not real. They are phantoms that disappear as soon as I think I have them in my grasp.

When I think I know, when I am absolutely certain... everything changes.

What are your golden cows? Feel free to send them to me. Let's put them all together and build... a piñata! :)

This too shall pass

And then the sun rose, without my willing it to.

The shadows lifted. Unexplicably.

Life wasn't such an affront to me anymore.

Just as I was getting used to the dark, it too passed.

This too shall pass.

The message made several appearances among the stacks and stacks of letters for the hope jar. It was meant for me, to highlight that acceptance isn't just about the darkness but the coming of the light, too.

Just as Jennifer and Melissa promised in Your Emotional Wisdom, the sadness flowed through me. I was feeling sorrow but the sorrow was not me, as much as in the midst of it, that's what it felt like.

I stand on the other side of it, on a beach washed clean, like a newborn blinking at the bright light, not quite knowing how to be so tender in the world.

cozy

Since my last post, in which I was kicking and screaming and moaning, I'm pleased to report that now... I am not. I'm finding a certain exquisite beauty in the dark.

It's fascinating, this observing of myself as I swim around, upended by loss and grieving -- not just the physical death of people I love -- but other, psychic deaths. Letting go of seasons of my life, letting go of the life I thought I was creating for myself, letting go of expectation, dreams, ambition.

So stripped of those things, what's left?

Does that frighten you? To think that there is a place as dark as this, where we are brought to our knees to contemplate our bare selves? I suppose it's optional. You don't have to sign up for that program. Really.

I'm a little fuzzy about the exact moment when I myself placed the order for this much suffering. It might have been that time beginning years back when I started asking perilous questions like, who am I? And what am I doing here?

So here's some advice for the faint of heart. Keep the lights on and... don't ask!!!! lol

But if you just can't help yourself, perhaps it will bring you comfort to hear that after being stripped of those things, I discovered that I am not those expectations and dreams after all. And even having been stripped of ambition, it turns out, I can still get up in the morning and make a bowl of oatmeal. And breathe.

It may not seem like so much to you, especially if there is still some unachieved goal you are driving toward. But for me, this experience is profound... it's like crawling into a womb, a naked, barely alive thing. In the womb I was not my resumé, or my roles, or even my dreams and ambitions. In the womb, I was no more than a pulsing heart and a breath, quite cozy and content to stay in the safety of this darkness, accepting of this world just as it is. And held.

And that's what I'm discovering in this state of darkness as well. Acceptance -- of myself as I am, of the conditions of the world as they are. Just breathing.