Only Everything
The buzzing of bees;
the rising of seas.
Thousands, illuminated—
worlds of pollen dance,
intimating, your heart:
its vastness.
Our life, this movement
from world,
to root,
and back again.
Light envelops you; again, you rise.
To meet it—
your task.
It will only be known
as everything.
The pebble lodged in my sandal as I paused to furiously flail my foot in an effort to remove it. The flies, of course, gathered in the heat of the summer morning, taking great interest in my now seeming stillness.
Wherever could I go? For all my walking, I am only ever here. Little pebbles and flies interrupt my mind and force me to remember that life is always a dance of forces I can know, and those that I do not. And what I do not know, I often experience as fear, frustration, interruption. My ideas about what must happen, or what I’d like to happen, make me view this event as alien, other, enemy. I hate the flies.
Something within this, though, calls out to me. What about the flies annoy me? Do I view myself as insulated from the world, able to live without perturbation? A wiser voice within me speaks to these flies lovingly, and still protects my space. Can I be this wiser voice?
Light is coming and envelops the day; we are called to be revealed alongside the world. And so, like those parts we do not know and fear as other, what the night has covered and kept revealed can now be seen.
✶ ✶ ✶
So it is with our suffering. Who is not wounded by this life? And yet, it is the last thing we want to acknowledge. To acknowledge it is to realize our meekness in the face of life. To see that the world does not fit neatly into our fixed notions of comfort, and that we are often called into a greater acceptance of this fact by our own pain.
The pain can be hidden or quite obvious, but either way, it is made clear in the way we move through life. Like the flies and pebbles, this pain often comes unbidden, seemingly disrupting our path. It emerges as a word spoken out of anxiety that wounds a loved one, or a sudden pulling away after closeness. Seeing the harm this causes, our tender hearts feel regret, sadness; we long to heal and be whole.
Sometimes, we may not be ready for the work required of us to integrate and heal our pain completely, so we learn how to live with it and make half-steps toward wholeness.
Sometimes, it comes like a cascading waterfall upon our hearts, and all we can do is stay conscious and witness the opening of old wounds as they unwind and resolve.
I remember, several years ago, after some spiritually opening experiences and a lot of time in psychotherapy, the unbidden sobbing and wailing that arose one evening, at the unlived life I had never been able to grieve before. It was not planned, and no technique could have caused its arising. Rather, it was the long and slow process of deepening and unfolding through my own mysterious layers that led to a ripening; ripening enough for the unconscious to reach out and show me what it had been patiently holding in its hands all along:
my wholeness.
✶ ✶ ✶
It is painful, and scary, and feels completely out of our control at first. And, slowly, we begin to invite this old pain in, even to see the sacredness of its place in our lives. Woundings become openings, and their disruptions are opportunities to increase our awareness and move toward wholeness.
Yes, the question becomes: “How can I love this?” instead of “Can I love this?” And that makes all the difference. We come to realize that pain is a part of this dance as much as our joy, and that we want to be whole; to be all the way alive. Mere anesthetization is not life. It requires our willingness to suffer with grace.
So we dance.
And sing.
And love, and cry.
Because every bit is worth savoring. Beautiful, even.
That was what struck me the most about my unbidden wailing years ago; amidst it all, I felt how indescribably excruciating it was, and I also felt how beautiful it was. All at once. They were both true. I could not reconcile one into the other, and I could not turn away from it. I had to meet them in love.
And in meeting them, the beauty and my tears were all the more, for my soul had longed for such acceptance. For such a meeting. To stop running away from the pain of life and the courage it takes to fully live it.
Because, wherever could we go?
The sweet smell of trees in the heat of summer,
the sight of the ocean’s majesty—
only everything is singing
of the wild and infinite
mystery.
You meet it,
again—
it shimmers,
with a thousand tiny
untold graces.
Yes, my love,
your heart is the world.
Your joy and your pain.
As vast as it is,
only everything is.