Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
-Pablo Neruda, The Song of Despair
Friends. The light in the morning. Have you seen it? Each day I wake up, and it is there – the bleeding humility of it, its sharp and delicate nature. It is a microscope, a sweet knife, and a reminder. It says, “Yes, the darkness occludes, and is my friend and companion. Some things are best in the dark. But I will show you the sea at seven in the morning, or six. And this will tell you new things. Each time.”
The beauty of everything is the First Thing Always, and best. God? Merely a word for the beauty that sits tucked and burning in the heart of every tiniest breath and cell. A billion worlds may exist inside the crease of an onion skin or the wrinkle of a walnut, and I will believe that each one is born whole and seamless from the Potential that is Beauty that is the perfect First, the Zero, the ineffable out of which comes….moss, carrion, the human heart, iron, tupelo honey, time and willows…the morning light, and the exquisite mechanics of the eye that perceives it.
Yet it is also in these mornings when I am most wracked by doubt about myself, and about the world. I have too much time and silence to myself not to begin to think about the rough parts of the larger diamond of life. People kill and maim, the earth suffers. People suffer. I avoid the news now on a consistent basis, and have never regretted that choice. The larger points come to me through friends and various channels – I feel no need to seek out the minutiae of torture and destruction to feel informed. Still, I cannot avoid it all, and the litany of grief seems louder in the mornings, when the day is new and fragile and could so easily be broken. Hunger is everywhere, and fear, and the gentleman on the corner where I get coffee tells me his story – how he’s lost his room, how the days are getting colder. The sparrow’s conundrum seems keener than ever. And every day again I have no good or best answer for it, and I ask for forgiveness for the ways in which I fail and am culpable.
I pray for the road to become the river Lethe, but it does not. Its gray movement is an old friend, but even still, it is not enough.
So I count on two things in the morning. Music, and the morning light.
Music is religion. Spirit, the wind, the sound of water, shout. Music is religion and I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t agree when it came down to brass tacks. And poetry, matched to music and drawn forth by a human voice trained like an instrument, a bell, a trumpet…well, coupled with the morning light and the rush of birds in the trees, I know of no better church. To be awakened, set on fire with justice, renewed and dedicated to the Work, to touch the Beauty that we call God and learn how to live out of that meeting place, that’s church. And church is Music.
Yes. Yes.
And the morning light shines on me a while,
and I am grateful for many things.
Ryan Sutton said,
November 13, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Beautiful.
*goes to put on some music and open the curtains*
gospelpagan said,
November 13, 2009 at 5:42 pm
sarah said,
November 17, 2009 at 8:06 am
I just found your weblog and am drawn to say something that won’t be enough for what I mean: beautiful. The way you write. The way you see. And thank you too – I’ve been pagan all my life and I’ve never heard anyone call God “Mama” before. It really touches me.
gospelpagan said,
November 18, 2009 at 12:06 am
Sarah,
Thank you so much for your lovely comment – it means a great deal to me to hear that.
-RS
Jasmine said,
November 19, 2009 at 4:58 pm
This so strongly reminded me of “Ode on Melancholy” (so was imagining a rose in that morning light).
I wanted to second what Sarah said about how beautiful your words are. There is something in the beauty and power of your language which helps me in thinking about the suffering which people aflict one another with. It draws me out of that frame of mind in which language is a tool that I’m not even very conscious of, and makes it swoop and fly and dig right up to that point where things can’t be expressed.
That awareness of the ineffable is so lovely, and so frightening–awesome and aweful. Because looking at it we know that there’s no certainty that what we do is right, and without that — how can I believe in my own goodness? in my own innocence? If I can’t, then I have to acknowledge my culpability and my need for forgiveness.
Knowing what a constant struggle that is helps me to acknowledge what I share with those who kill and maim, because I think that violence has its roots in turning away from uncertainty. Trying to maintain one’s innocence by labelling the good and the evil seems to mean projecting out guilt onto some other who must be controlled (for the good of all) and if not controlled, destroyed.
gospelpagan said,
November 23, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Hi Jasmine,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments! Indeed, this awareness is both terrifying and brilliant all at once, and the struggle to maintain it is constant I think for all people. I especially resonate with the idea of violence having its roots in turning away from uncertainty. That’s an important observation – fundamentalism is rarely introspective, and without that vetting of one’s worldview against changing circumstance, or the shifting world, or the dynamism of real relationship, belief becomes a killing project.
-RS