The Silence

Life is born of silence.
Without silence we would not
hear the song.
Silence is the life-giving womb.
Silence is the beat of the heart.
Wear her like a crown.
Wear her like a cape.
Wear silence in the midst of laughter,
sorrow, joy and pain.
Enter her womb,
there sound is born.

The Nurturing Power of Destruction

I am only beginning to understand the nurturing power of destruction. For so long I destroyed without knowing the cycles. Why are ants and bees more wise than me? The rose bush is a master teacher, knowing when to bloom and when to simply be. Yesterday,I cut back her dead blooms. She did not argue. There was nothing to protest. It was time to let go. And bloom again.
Thank you, I said, holding her wisdom in my heart.

While Buying a Cup of Coffee...

She was so pretty, so young. I envied her wake-up skin and uncombed hair that only made her more lovely.

I went to pay.
"Your name is Emily," she said. "Mine is, too."

I smiled in wonder.

She said, "When you opened your wallet to pay, I saw your name."

We laughed.

"Such a popular name now," I said. "When I was a kid, I was always the only Emily."

"I know." She smiled.

We laughed.

How could she know. She was so beautiful and young with her wake-up skin and morning uncombed hair. I missed my beautiful young self. Every morning I stare at my wrinkles and graying hairs that I can no longer count.

We chatted about being Emily. "The most popular girl's name for the last 17 years," she said.

17. She hardly looked more than 17.

I paid for my coffee and left. The yearning for youth and its beauty flowered like a dying rose. And I said, "What have I forgotten?"

The answered flowered like a lotus.

You are Emily.
She is you.
All is one.
You are she.
You are you.
You are old.
You are young.
You are dying.
You are born.

The flower grew beyond my being, embracing me.

And yet, my mind still yearned.

Message from the Muse

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.

—Carl Jung

When the Soul Speaks....

I had a fight with my husband last night. I slept in the guest room and come morning, I was still angry and hurt. So I decided to meditate on how to handle these feelings. This was the intention of the meditation, but soon I found myself considering the question of my truth. Not the truth in terms of my version of the fight. That I was right, of course, and he was wrong-- and would never admit it much less apologize. My meditation had taken me to my Truth with a capital T. I was aware, too, that the voice who was considering this Truth was not my own. That the thoughts in my head were not my own.

I wasn’t, however, taken aback by the fact there was this other voice talking to me. I often have conversations with my guides. Over the years, perhaps because I write fiction, perhaps because of my proclivity to imagine, or perhaps because my father, a great lover of Shakespeare, was fond of quoting Hamlet, saying: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophies” — perhaps because of these influences and predilections, I have become an ardent believer that imagination holds the deeper, truer reality.

So, hearing this other voice was comfortable. What she said, however, took me by surprise. Here I was, ruminating over this fight I had had with my husband and, suddenly, I am given the answer to questions I have been asking for a very long time:

What is the truth of my life?

Why am I here?

What is my path?

I had always thought that if and when I knew the answers to these questions, my work, the meaning of my life would become clear. So the answer I was given surprised me. I was told this: The truth of who you are is simply this: you are one with God. You are safe in the light. Nothing can harm you.

I have heard this before. In fact, I have sucked on such thoughts as a child sucks on a hard candy. Intently. In the end, however, such beliefs—although nice—seemed just too… I’m not sure… Perhaps they didn’t sufficiently meet my work ethic, my need to be busy and to have meaningful work. So believing that the truth of my life is that I am one with God, that I am safe in the light, that nothing can harm me… simply wasn’t sufficient. I needed something more proactive. Something that would really do IT for me.

This morning, to my surprise, the words did IT for me. They impacted me like the greatest ah-ha of my life. I felt them in a way that words cannot describe. The image of a rainbow comes to mind. One can talk about the beauty of a rainbow but talk is only talk until once the rainbow appears. Another image is the joy of making eye contact with a small child whose eyes do not wander off of mine, but draw me in with innocence and immediacy. I smile. The child smiles. It is a smile of sheer simplicity. It is a smile that feels like, well, the rainbow.

Ach, pedestrian! my mind thinks. Rainbows and baby’s smiles. Come on, Emily, you’re a writer. You can come up with something better than that. But I can’t. For in the end, even these images pale before the experience.

I hear the words: The truth of who you are is simply this: you are one with God. You are safe in the light. Nothing can harm you.

The voice goes on. It says, “This is what your soul wants you to know.”

I think, “My God, a moment of soul-speak!” My heart pounds in anticipation. This is a dream I tell myself. But I am awake.

The voice goes on. It says, quoting me, “ ‘Who am I?’ you ask. 'You are light."

I listen very carefully.

“ ‘Who am I?’ you ask. You are the flame of God and creation.

“‘Who am I?’ you ask. You are a being of light.

“There is nothing to fear.

“You say that you do not know who you are inside you own skin. (Indeed this is a feeling I have had a lot of late.) The voice continues, “This is because you are searching for me. I am always here. Waiting. Waiting. For you to see. I have no fear. Only a longing for you, in this incarnation, to return to me. It is I who lives inside your skin. It is I who breathes the light as you breath air. I am light only. I seek the light and union with you. I am only half.

“You long for a twin. I know this. You have longed for a twin since you were a child, for someone who knows you because she is you. For someone who loves you because you have been together since the beginning. Someone who will never stop loving you, no matter what. I tell you this, beloved, you feel this hunger because you have a twin, one you have forgotten. Me. Your Soul. I am incomplete without you. You are incomplete without me.

“You feel sadness in this life, great uncertainty, what you call depression. You feel anger, even rage. These are not outward things or imagined hurts. Walking the path of an incarnate being is difficult and often feels impossible. You lash out at others or yourself. Why? Because you, the incarnate being, forgets the twin who is the soul, forgets that you are never and could never be alone.

“To walk in partnership with me is to truly embrace the journey of life. For I am here to remind you with each and every breath that in our oneness you are a being of light. You are a child of God. You cannot die because I cannot die. We transform, shapeshift if you will. Birth itself is the great shapeshifter.

“Matter, this stuff of the flesh is heavy. We, you and I, we choose the journey of flesh in joy and expectation. Promising always that the body will not forget the soul. And yet, you do. To remember and reunite with me is the greatest dance of life. The never ending dance that takes you through the veils and allows you to journey back to your true birthright. Where there is no anger, no depression, fear or meanness. Where there is only light and God and being and acceptance.

“To remember me is a great task of this life for you. So this moment is one of celebration. Remember Dear One, no one can hurt you. No one can demean you. From this moment on, when you feel anger, rage, depression, emptiness, know that you walk hand in hand with the twin for whom your heart yearns.”

The moment passed, the joy did not sustain itself. Life got in the way. And I forgot. But not ever entirely again. I hold the feeling of this conversation in my heart, in my mind’s eye, in every core of my being. And should I forget for long, one part of me will remember and remind me. I have nothing to fear. I am one with God. I am safe in the light. I am not alone.

And, the fight with my husband...my need to prove I was right and he was wrong... simply didn't matter anymore. It was forgotten and we embraced.

One of My New Favorite Poems

Saint Francis and the Sow

by Galway Kinnell


The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Creativity as Mediator Between the Worlds

Creativity is a mysterious journey that connects us to the unseen worlds. There was a time when all people had access to the unseen worlds, although it was the shamans, story tellers and healers who mediated between the worlds as they journeyed into the Mystery and interpreted the images found there. Today we have our contemporary journeyers into the cosmic unseen worlds--many creative people are such journeyers--but as a culture we have lost the connection to our instinctual nature. With the development of the human brain and the march of history, the pendulum has swung so far that an overwhelming majority of people do not consider the journey into the unseen worlds a possibility, much less a necessity.

It has become trite to say that modern society has lost its soul, but in truth, that's just what has happened. Soul is something that cannot be experienced in the outer world. It cannot be understood, evaluated, judged. Soul is the groundswell of the inner world, and the eyes with which we view the outer world are blind when turned inward. It is only with the eyes of the heart--the instinctual nature of our deep internal knowing--that we traverse the inner landscape and find our way to soul.

If our outer eyes are perceptive, however, and guided by our inner knowing, we can see the outcome of mystery. This happens when, for example, the invisible becomes suddenly visible, or the impossible becomes suddenly possible in ways that cannot be explained by the rational mind. Such things often happen on both a small and large scale, but in Western culture we are quick to attribute them to coincidence; if coincidence isn't sufficient, then the doubting Thomas is convinced it can "figure out" a rational explanation of the mystery.

How much richer life can be when we are open Mystery. But to do this, we must be brave warriors of the spirit, with creativity both our fire and our sword.

Sacred Question

What is the deepest longing of my life?

The answer can be heard only in the stillness.
Can you feel its call...