Article voiceover
I know that grief has struck you right in the hip Making walking days if not impossible Almost I know it wasn’t with a rubber mallet Or even a wooden bat More like a ball ping hammer a tire iron I know too it was right in the place Of an old injury you thought almost healed There’s our mistake We have one reservoir for pain To and from which all suffering flows Grief lies like a lava lake just beneath skin, beneath cartilage and joint Waiting for some great quake to reactivate its fury Destroying muscle too in its wake Of heart and other varieties Spewing dust that covers the sun For who knows how long A blow with such force With such molecular memory It says aloud not again why me? Not again Your job is not to heal that raging inferno That happens by a miracle on geologic time and honestly, never completely The lake is part of yourself Part of ecological health whether hot lava now baked-in scars long ago Your job this moment is to get off the floor While the ash settles without discretion On your days to recognize heat as the natural state of things Not the exception Loss is not something that happened because of who you are Something you said Something you didn’t But part of the formation of things liquid and solid landmarks of the cutting river of minutes The landmarks of your own being alive The truth that all things eventually die It’s ok to observe the spew overhead with terror To lace your fingers behind your neck for protection To go deep into the dark of weeping caves It is right and good, in fact There’s water there for cooling Salt for cauterizing the wounds But can you say also and with and simultaneously To pain You have been heard You’ve been seen But you’re not all? This lava lake lives It’s real It’s dangerously hot It has erupted It will burn every layer of protective hair from your body But it’s not the whole of earth It does not define the landscape Of this lusty romance This natural dance Between time and the spaces where it lives Don’t look backward or forward Across or over or down Level your eyes And dig in your feet to the gravity That has promised to hold And never failed There are fire plants emerging as we speak even deep in the cave Of yourself While you do the work of soaking in the cleansing bath of tears The blue flames of fire are licking at the pain Burning it away too Even the hot lava of suffering can only survive itself so long Before the pines grow taller and the forest floor grows rich There are great creatures hiding In the muck of this ash Feeding and thriving On new land Let it burn Burn it down until there’s only you left Green and alive and unclothed Fire is not the exception to the rule It’s part of you When the heat has cooled and the bugs have done their work in the ash the cycle wanes life will be fertile again I'm the wife of lightning I should know Questions for meditation: How do you think of grief? Is it another piece of evidence that all of life is pain? Is it another piece of evidence you're not good enough; you're doomed; you'll never have peace or happiness; you'll never be free? Or is it natural and itself--with no bullying agenda, just a season whose days you will live because they pass? What happens if you don't resist? What happens if you let the pain rage and have its time, let it burn until it has no more fuel for itself? A prayer using words: Holy fire, holy truth, holy cutting time and space, sacred space of wounds and of life, help us to live into you, not with fear of walking, but even with a great limp, step by step through the fire ravaged forest. Help us to finally come to the place where the fire plants grow, where our own fertile valleys will return. Help us trust in the miracle of healing that happens without our engineering if we can let it burn, if we can let the ash collect on the ground for new growth, for hope we don't try to feel today, but is the inevitable consequence of things. Amen.