At the MMC practice group the last day of March, we learned and sang a beautiful song. Its maker, Rachel Kroh, is someone I admire deeply from the wee slice of time I saw her in action at the MMC workshop I attended five years ago. The words are from one of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.
Fear not the pain Let its weight fall back into the earth For heavy are the mountains Heavy are the seas
They help. Singing them helps. Singing them outside helps even more -- hanging the clothes, picking up bits of birthday balloons, searching for a scared kitten. The pain of what has been, the pain of what is, the pain that is yet to come -- there is room for it all.
I have even tried to take it literally, adding the heaviness of loss -- mutual and unrequited, experienced and anticipated -- to the weight of the mountain, by water that is flowing to the sea.
Earth answers with spring: surprise, rebirth, abundance. Newness, humor, exactitude.
Heaven sends me visions: It is Mark's tomb Jesus stands before, giving thanks and stating his intentions and calling forth the dead, we saying "But he is ashes!" and even that doesn't matter because Mark is walking out from the rocks, waving and smiling like a fern in the breeze. Resurrection is possible, and Unity calls all things, all things, all things back to its Oneness.
And Life between lost me all three of my children, one at a time, on the same full moon day. First Ursula, passing alone the right turn back to the playgroup picnic blankets and continuing a long way (2.6 miles!) through the woods by herself, me too late in missing her to catch up until I found her back at the beginning. Then Flora, who was so excited to tell me Ursula had returned that she came after me, not knowing that it was a 2.6 mile loop. In time, we were all reunited, safe, mostly sound, and beyond relieved. Later in the day, a typical antagonistic scene played itself out between the three oldests in our house, only this time Asa did not come back from his anger and took it silently to bed.
There is much to unpack. The buddy-system could have prevented all of the mornings' long walkings, and the same power of presence could have directed a different afternoon scene with a different ending. I am hit again with how much I do not know, how much I forget, how inattentive I can be to what is plainly before me. And, too, what is the gift of the day, and will I accept it? For all of the above is still here: surprise, rebirth, abundance; newness, humor, unerring accuracy.
Let me go outside, then, for there it can all be given away, reabsorbed, transformed into something else altogether.