Dawn

Flames of light are licking the horizon

The wind nudges my ribs

“Wake UP!

Sweep the crusties out of your eyes

Wipe away the sleepy tears.

You’re gonna want to see this.”

Could it be?

That I wasn’t crazy?

That my tornados of faith and

Hurricanes of trust

Did more than tear down “was”?

Sly and grinning,

Their chaos might have planted my dreams right

Where I would trip over them

Just when I was least expecting it

Purple night still sparkles around me

Still

Quiet the dew falls

Sinking into my thirsty lips

Bringing news

That the dark

Cold

Dry

Bones of night

Are yielding

Making way

For my heart to resound once again

My veins to flow with a joyful river

Of love

A song I’ve never heard is echoing

Through the stars

I’m made of

Some Words and a Story

Nothing Is My Only Lover

I had a vision recently of what exists at the core of every single person. The spirit hovering over waters, and in particular, the space between. 

A reverse whirlpool if you will, where every thing original to that individual emerges into their conscious awareness.

The key to the creative life, a crafted life, a life lived on purpose, is to espouse oneself to the nothingless and allow. To keep thought, fear, egoic static and interference from staining the perfect expression of Source that wants to flow through you.

The beautiful part is our ability to dance with it. We are not merely vessels – in some mysterious way we leave our fingerprint on God as He is born through us. There is a true dance, a beautiful, painful, estatic, and at times perfectly harmonious play that can unfold at the heart of each of us as we strain to give birth to ourselves.

And this space of nothing is the only oasis in the authentic life. Space is necessary from all things, created and uncreated, and only in the void can true rest be found. 

The only way we can forge a fruitful relationship with any aspect of life is to put as much distance as possible between us at that aspect, not out of fear and avoidance, but by recognizing that more than anything, we are the nothing. The more time we abide in spacious rest, the clearer our view becomes of ourselves, the easier it becomes to release the parts and patterns that would choke out all we are striving to cultivate. 

A deeply luscious clarity crystallizes in our relationship to the world, and from there we receive the satisfaction we once chased before recognizing the exclusive substance of nothingness.

We discover a universe in each word, magic begins to follow us like a loyal and playful puppy, and ordinary begins to be replaced with a richly colored and endless stream of beauty beyond all longing. Aslan’s country.

The irony of it all is that this is what I learned from the last 6 weeks of bear fighting all the patterns that created an ebb and flow of suicidal ideation over â…”  of my life. 

Sitting on the curb at a corner near my house, blankly staring at each car rolling through, I realized that no one could ever give me anything I had not already given myself. My love affair with nothing fast became a marriage fusion.

I’ve lived my life in the invisible war zone of unconscious trauma, that felt more like a nuclear war zone for the last 4 years I made that trauma conscious by choosing to recover. I’ve spent literally every moment of that time fighting to the death to save my life. Invited into deeper and more profound ego deathes over time, exhausted beyond reason and having forgotten the taste of living, I began to question the purpose in going on. 

On that curb I decided one last time that if I’m ready to die now, I might as well wait and see what I can make of my life until it ends naturally. Having journeyed mainly alone through this life (thanks trauma) I realized that if no one could help me, no one could get in my way either. 

All of sudden, and it was just me and every galaxy in the universe and whatever I could fathom to invite through the birth portal of my heart. 

And at long last, I have arrived at the beginning.

The Deep

The current pulls me

This way and that

The darkness guiding

My fingers trail along the ocean floor

Collecting the deepest and most 

Impactful

Trails left along my DNA

Mangled remains of what should have been

My humanity

Tearfully, tenderly sorting 

Untangling

Grief rips through me

Removing all the festering fragments

Of ego

Defensiveness

And false realities

Removing why, when, how, who

It’s warm hands on my shoulders

“Look up, loved one.

Remember the only reason you are here.

Swim towards the stars.”

Washing up somewhere between death and hope

My mother lifts me gently

It’s hard to tell where she ends and I 

Begin

I sprinkle myself through her forests

Cycle myself through her heart

Where birth and death intertwine

Where her sweet, full 

Silence

Dissolves

Returns 

Me to 

The pulse of life

Build

I dip a feather into this ink

The one my heart supplies, steady and sure

Close my eyes

And begin to draw

I watch the image forming

Surprised to see no black or white

Not even grey

So many shades of pain

Of decisions

No one should have to make

I wasn’t prepared for this

Test

That has no right answer

There’s no room for cerebral gloating here

The multiple choice options are “numb”

“Dead”

“Alive”

Yet daisies and trains of sunlight follow me

Sparkling glasses of ordinary

With a shot of bewilderment

No one prepared me for this

Class

The empty train station

Where you’re left alone to assemble the train from

Whatever you can scavage

Using whatever tools you can fashion

From your own imagination

And the bench’s boards

Boarding it with a straight back

Hands folded neatly

Filling the car with solitude

Respect

And emptiness

Trust is the conductor

Blue yonder the only map

Facing east

As the sun rises

The Eye

I want to tell you a story

But it’s not over

So instead I’ll tell you

How God has turned my pain

Into fireworks

He’s taken

The peaces

The Pacific rage

My cages and chains and fractured

Function

All my love untethered

A kaleidescope rug is lain down

Warmth for the feet of others

Joy for my own heart

Every color it’s own

Love story

He’s rearranged it all

Placing a peace within the rage

An answering in

The breaking itself

Weaving a larger

Mandala

Out of the rough, bleeding edges

Than I can even see

Content to rest here

In the eye of the storm

Tired

Years have waltzed by

As I’ve danced in the circle of love

And yet

This beautiful animal that I am has been

Forgotten

In my pursuit of higher things

As I’ve drifted down to the ground I find her

Moaning in exhaustion

Soul eyes piercing

“When does time come for me?

When is rest? Safety?

When will you let me play again?

When will you feed me what I truly need,

Instead of pouring my food out at the table

Of others?

You promised.”

Tears roll hot.

The one I was given first,

I’ve left for last

Because they said so.

“It’s selfish,”

They said,

As if eating and enjoyment and rest

And needing the companionship of others

We’re the greatest sins one could commit.

And I believed them.

But I know the taste of sunlight

And the deep seal of sleep

Over my scabby soul

I’ve drank freedom on a mountain side

And in candle lit water running down

My body in the darkness

The eternal well springs strong and deep within.

Finally I turn my face to the east

I don’t know what I’ll find there

But I know I will finally find

Enough.

How Could I Have Known?

Pain is doorway

Disguised as a barbed wire fence

Don’t look

Leap

Loss is an illusion

A mirage

When we walk through it

We find our keys on the other side

The key to the door

The one you looked for your whole life

THAT door

The one that would free you

All those days thinking

“There must be more”

All that wondering

About the magic and the romance

The pulsing, radiating light

That would fade

As soon as you reached out to touch it

When life pulls your dreams from your hands

Whether by gentle tug or violent twist

It’s checking to see

How badly you want them

How many risks will you take?

How many unknown roads explore?

How long will you lean into the pain until maybe, just maybe, you fall through to the other side?

Betrayal

The “no”s pile onto my chest

Slowly the breath is squeezed out my soul

The hunger out of my body

The will to live begins to flicker ominously

Like a pile of boulders they sit, undisturbed

By their own crushing impact

Many of them placed there by my kin

My brothers and sisters

Where is a soul to take even one away?

Where is the Good Samaritan now?

Old ways of coping stalk me 

A pack of wolves offering temporary relief

Where is yes? 

My being howls in pain

Day and night

Not a moment’s true respite

It’s been years since I tasted rest

That lasted long enough to touch the marrow

My rage burns the bridges of false belonging

Strung between bitterness and true solitude

I only pray that once this has finished 

This slow death

Whatever is left

Becomes medicine

For this unforgivable

Betrayal

Becoming

I take myself by the hand

“Deep breath. You ready? Remember to relax into it.”

Together we leap to icy depths

The weight of it pounding in on all sides

I lean into the burn

Unfurl my toes to the piercing embrace

The shock reminds me what the point is

It’s not the treasures at the bottom

As my impatience would like me to believe

The fact that I can even feel

Tells me

“You’re alive. You’re becoming.

Becoming makes you a palace

Where you can gather the treasures in

Arrange them for the friends who will grace these halls and windows

And live each day supported by the warmth of the trees and suns

The wildflower and thistles

Those mountain breezes that whistle silence through your soul

You are becoming big enough for all of this.

Unfurl.”

Drink

The pattering drapes itself over

My tiny abode

I sigh with relief as my mother speaks my heart for me

I press still deeper into the steady rhythm

The rasp of love and it’s mirror, pain

Sculpt my spirit in the deluge

I take refuge by burrowing

Sinking

Reach, woman

Use your strength

Down this time

Hold onto the roots that already

Sprout from your sacrum

And drink

Midnight

Quiet in

Listen

Whispered voices, world over

Are swelling and swirling bed time tales

One note

One brush stroke

If you strain to hear a heart break

You just might find the wholeness of beauty

The dark side of moon

Making things complete

Forks clang like typewriters

The highways lilt lullabies

We’re all telling a story

Most of us unknowingly

Perhaps even unwillingly

Meanwhile the masters

True heroes

The ones who’ve decided

Are mutely leaking their masterpieces

On the walls of space and time

Knowingly

Willingly

Wielding and relinquishing their legacies

For us to stumble upon one dusty

Dried up day

An enigmatic gaze reaching

Framed on the wall

Wrinkled words that used to pass you by

Now calling your name

Just in time

Their creaking, earth trembling strength

Their war cries

Joy cries

Songs of laughter

Wails of grief

Shattering your self doubt

Their blood runs through you

Together we weave

Together we ride these waves

The never ending glory

Of life