Emmaatlast’s Weblog

okay, i say yes.

not a half-hearted ‘yes, but only’    

as in –

‘yes, but only’ until it feels uncomfortable.

‘yes, but only’ until i no longer feel like i’m still good enough  to do this.

‘yes, but only’ if nothing else in my life has to change.

 i simply(?) say ‘yes’. yes, as if i have no other choice, as if i have no safety net, no security, no easier path that won’t result in water meeting stone.

 the kind of yes i once said when survival depended upon on my yes … to something wild and unknown that  terrified me but into which i had been thrown… re-membering now the sudden way courage flowed  from my heart as if it was beyond my control.  the kind of yes that came when my world was turned upside down and i had no choice but to find my legs again if i hoped to find food. the kind of yes that accepts that i will feel beaten and depleted, lost and confused, unworthy and unable, but knows that my heart will carry me through.

because something in me is telling me that my very survival does depend on this.

i recall that day i was so profoundly moved as we stood over the cold stone to drop our clay pots. how it was that with each crash, i felt the full impact of that yes. yes to the fall. yes to being broken. yes to becoming human. . yes to life, imperfect but bearing beauty, how it was that i cried tears of sacred joy at witnessing that miracle of birth.

i want to say yes to that! to imperfection and brokeness. to terrible beauty and joy.

my god, you have dropped into my lap a treasure and i thought to toss it aside because i wasn’t good enough? how many treasures have i cast aside?…. and still i expect you’d continue to drop them until i opened my heart to catch one, like some lover tossing stones at my closed window.

what caused me to finally hear that tap on my soul’s window?  your persistence?  my quiet?, or the serenade of your band of musicians? all three here in this moment,  as i sit gazing at my reflection in the mirror, wondering who i am.  

suddenly the glass sash flies up.

i see it is you.

‘yes’

i wonder when i started believing ‘ i can’t’? how i forgot that i had been given the tools that i need long ago when life pushed me over the edge and said ‘jump’. did i think that i crashed on that day? in what funhouse mirror have i been seeing my reflection, mistaking my flying for crashing?

in your mirror, i see, gazing up from beneath my window.  what grace has been given that i called disgrace. what power i labeled powerless. what courage named fear.

i see my wings unfurling,  feel the power in my chest opening, re-member my courage, my strength, my grace.

instinctive.  

spontaneous.

unquestioned.

undeliberated.

wild.

now you urge, ‘jump’, once again, eros to my psyche, locked up in these walls.

and i leap

and i’ll fly

wild.

*from Shakespears line in Romeo and Juliet, at the window

’tis but thy name that is my ememy’