prayer

Driving up the hill to my home tonight, I passed by a couple of leashed snow dogs. I gasped, taken at their beauty, then thought of Persephone, then burst into tears.

Parked at the hilltop drive, overlooking the sea, I'm thinking about Summer 2010. The thing was so unexpected in it's overt form, but I think it was driven by a more surreptitious longing.

I found myself on this summer night, completely outside the realm of all my known life. I was in a place no one knew with a person no one knew and I remember feeling like I was in a fairy land, removed from every responsibility. Here I had no house or mortgage, no job, no garden, no dogs or cats or chickens, no husband or friends or religious family. I did not know until that moment how heavy it was to carry all of that. I had not known there was any possibility of escape or that I even needed escape.

The evening was monumental for me that way. It was a glimpse for me into what was driving me to Aotearoa. Had I known the full extent of what I was doing, I may have halted it all.

Here I am now, still leaving behind parts of my life I had so deliberately and carefully invited in and surrendered myself to.

When I had to leave Synara, or, when I had to let go of her to allow in the rest of what became my life, I never stopped wanting her, or mourning her. I never stopped regretting that I wasn't able to find a way to include her in my ongoing experience.

Now, I'm not sure if that is how it is with love, if by the same depth of joy and bliss it can open one to, it carves the dark cavern that one must eventually fall down.

I expect that should I not be reunited with that which I have left in Michigan, and now, more that I am leaving on this island, that it could be the same. I do not want it to be so, and would love to discover a way of holding without grasping. If it takes me the remainder of my life to realize this lesson, or know this way, it will not be time wasted, as it seems as though I have spent the past few decades (all 3 of them) working out this dilemma.

I am grateful to have loved so deeply, still, even with all the falling. And may I always feel that gratitude. May the wounds of love allow me to love better, not less. May it allow me to stretch further beyond known boundaries, and not to become brittle and wounded.

And may I wake up one day, before too long, with a dog in my room and a hive in my yard, and a horse in my pasture. And love by my side.

Amen.