Emptiness

Sometimes we live with a deep loneliness in a certain way, and when someone comes along who understands that place and we don't feel so alone anymore, some of us get clingy.  Okay, plain and simple...this is me.  There are places in me that not many people understand.  We all have those places.  The really spiritually mature folks know about those lonely spots in themselves and are able to stay with the emptiness, so they can be more present to others.  It's a kind of hospitality.  That emptiness makes room for the stranger. 

There are some places, deep within the unconscious of the human heart, where the wind never ceases to howl, and the darkness presses in so closely it feels like a heavy and stifling blanket thrown over us.  Fear lives there.  And the only one who can speak peace to the terror, is the One who calms the chaos and can cast out a whole legion of demons. 

Recently, when I was doing an exercise in which I invited Jesus to work in my subconscious, I opened the door and in my mind's eye, there was a wall of the Grand Canyon.  He was going to have to join one of those caravans that travel to the bottom of the canyon on donkeys to get anything done in there.  It's deep and wide, to say the least.  A dangerous trip for the hardiest.  And at the bottom of the canyon is a raging river that has carved out that canyon over millennia.

When my family visited the Grand Canyon, I was about 12, I wouldn't get out of the car.  I was afraid of heights.  I guess in some ways, not much has changed.  I still don't want to look at the scary stuff.  It's easier to turn away, but it stays with us, even when we run the opposite direction.  Doesn't stop me from running however.

I wrote the poem below this afternoon and felt it would be a good add on.  There are so many layers of things to dig through, and I work so hard to figure it out, and I put up so many defenses, trying to protect myself and all of it wears me out...when I'm not running that is. 

One of my instructors told us that when she got completely befuddled, she would lie down on the earth for at least an hour, and when she got up again, things would be clearer.  Just being out in nature helps me to a degree.

armed with a spoon
determined to dig
through all the layers of earth
of stone
of rubble
of fossils
to end up at the underside
of the earth,
the work
wears us out.

Hacking away at stone
doesn't allow for tenderness
we think
and try to be as hard as iron,
unyielding,
though clearly the spoon is bent.

Lie down you children of earth
against your mother's heart
take in her sweet aroma,
and listen to her song.

Go gently
walk gently
speak gently

wait in the silence,
leave your little spoon
for appropriate things

and the stone will melt away
like wax in summer's heat,

The children
will learn to trust again,
come out to play,
their laughter dancing
in the moonlight.