Contemporary mystic poet, Chelan Harkin is so good at reminding and distilling. Much like 14th century Persian mystic and poet, Hafiz, she takes our very real and universal confusion at having chosen an earthly incarnation (what person in their right mind would do that?!) and leads us back to simple fire.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song out of prayer
Made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
Removed it of rejoicing
Wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
These times are complicated—said most humans who ever lived at any time.
We normalize chaos, pain, inequity, and war so expertly that it takes something pretty major to wake us up from our sleepwalk. Enter the holy fool, our president-elect.
Humans are prone to seeing what we want to see and the modern world supports our desire to curate a world free of things we’d rather not see. Personally, I tend to see the stein as half-full, but that doesn’t mean I’m a sucker. I see the world with the clearest eyes I can muster and that often inspires tears, hip sways, and ecstatic yowls.
I keep seeing this phrase out there in response to invitations to forgive, to love, to move away from concepts of “other.” The phrase in question is “I’m not there yet.”
I hear you, loves.
I see you.
I am you.
Rushing to “there” is not sustainable. I have no intention of encouraging you to move away from your feelings of anger, of sadness, or downright despondency.
And still, I wonder when you will be “there” and where, exactly, “there” is. If “there” is a place where you will not feel anger or where you will feel safe everywhere you go, “there” will elude you for the rest of your days. If “there” is a place where what’s happening before your eyes and in the hearts of some of your fellow humans, will make sense, it’s very clear to me why getting “there” feels hard and perhaps even downright foolish.
When you say, “I’m not there,” I worry for you and for me that you’re saying, “I’d like to hold on to this pain a little longer.” I fear that you’re telling your heart that it’s got to keep feeling tight and hot and small until you say otherwise—until it’s been in enough pain for a long enough time to learn some always elusive and uniquely redemptive lesson.
Please let your heart do all the things it wants to do. Be enraged and let that rage melt into surrender and then flow into exhaustion that gives rise to regeneration. And then do it again. Over and over. Perhaps in each moment. Know that the new growth is fertilized by all that burned and still burns in your broken heart, but please resist the temptation to be in pain, “just a little while longer.”
Chelan Harkin says it much better than I could in this excerpt from one of her poems:
Do not fall away now.
This is the time to rise.
Your light is being summoned.
Your integrity is being tested
That it may stand more tall.
When everything collapses
We must find within us
That which is indomitable.
Rise, and find the strength in your heart.
Rise, and find the strength in each other
Burn through your devastation,
Make it your fuel.
There is here, my sweet friends.
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