i am humbled. i am humbled by this understanding that has come flooding
over me with this recent breaking of the dam. could it be that by looking
long, intently, willingly at her suffering and pain, i have at long last
found the elusive face of christ. as god chooses to become human, to
express god’s self in this physical creation that i am, that we are, does
god somehow become intertwined so intimately with this flesh that we
release and realize divinity itself only when we seek and heal the wounded, only when
we embrace and reclaim the wounded one with whom god is so endeared and
entwined? is it only then that resurrection and re-union can occur….this
two becoming one, two separate selves, the outer shell and the inner
wounded, the disconnected flesh and the hidden spirit?
how is it that Spirit and the wound somehow become one, and so we walk for
so many years disconnected from them both? is it that she (the wounded
one) requires so much more love that the scales were tipped for all this
time in her favor. rejoice oh highly favored daughter? is it there that
love rushed in…literally….to bathe the wound with loving and thus to
inseminate this christ child within me, this one who was growing deep
within and unbeknownst by me? until the stirring of her pain, the pressing
of her growing presence, forced me into the painful labor of my own birth?
and this day as i look into this mirror, i cry out, oh god, oh god, have
you always been there, in the face of this one so full of sorrow, in these
eyes so filled with self-contempt. were you there, inside, beseeching me
to look? for all this time i have been afraid to touch her pain, afraid to
feel the enormity of her suffering, afraid to gaze upon the face of christ
upon the cross in my own mirror, and so i could not find Love? all this
while those sorrowful eyes have been your own, this suffering your pain.
and in that moment standing face to face with you at last, in that moment
of surrender, as i passed through the mirror into you, did we become one
again…the lost me intact with the walking me, your Spirit conjoined with
my flesh, no longer left behind within that mirror when i turned away. now
i can carry her and god within me, consciously inside of me, is this the
promise? is this what the monastic’s mean by carrying your cell with you?
that what you find within, You in wholeness and completeness, is now
capable of walking on this miracle of earth, gazing out upon the world
with love, seeking beauty within the wounded christ that is trapped within
the other. no longer needing to be seen, only to see.
to love what is difficult to love leads to god every time, whether that
difficult thing is within or without…it is always there that god is
waiting, and it is there that we meet god, somehow both embracing the
wound and wounded by it, waiting to be healed and to be released. it is
there within the wound that god’s preference is to be, for it is there
that love is most required in our absence, and it is there that love finds
the greatest nurture for its growth.
in gazing now upon the cross, even as i gaze into this mirror, i am not
engaging in some self-abusive punishment for sin, but i am filled to
overflowing with compassion rather than self-hatred, for i am gazing upon
the struggle and suffering of humankind stamped upon my face, stamped upon
the face of God, and oh how i am filled with love for her, for all that
She has borne for me. for ALL that she has led me through, for her
patience and her wisdom and her strength. i gaze upon a God who loves and
wants to set me free and a God who yearns to be set free, as one. and i
fall in love with God all over again
oh god you willingly take on the mantle of humanity each and every day,
and bear this suffering along with us because you are truly one with us.
we never are alone. it is only in my separateness that i believed this,
only when i believed that the one within the mirror wasn’t me, that i
believed that God and me were not one, that i believed there ever was a
separate me to be alone at all.
and i fall in love with humanity….for in the face of all humanity now i
see the christ, divine beings willing to become human, to partake of the
painful nurture of this grand experiment of life, in order to grow Love.
how brave a people we are on one hand, and yet how assured of love and
connection we must truly be within the far reaches of our consciousness
that we would not fear, how certain of our oneness with what Is that we
would unquestioningly take this journey into life. it baffles me that we
do not glow, that the distance in our consciousness can become so great
that we forget that we are but creatures for a time, sent to bear the
light.
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