Altars: Orientations in Time

Week 7 - Promise

The churn before the answer

Consider fire then, the crackle and climb of it. The fury. The ache. The driving need to be done, to be something else, to shed and change and crack and rise. A calling home that is never quite arrived at. The engine of longing for peace. Are we done yet? Are we done?

You circle the wagon of your self around this nebula. Whisper and croon. Call it seedling. Be the skin that divides the inside from the out. Be containment, shelter, pause. Trust the mystery. Love it, the unseen, unvoiced, unrealized churn of becoming. The mess of it. The inevitable imminent shell breaking. Willing to do both, to hold and to break.

There is a place of recognizing pleasure, the touch and greet of it, that is not quite inhabitance, not yet surrender. All the little hairs upstanding. Oh. Let yourself play with that field, the approach and withdraw. Feel the hum and throb of it rising in answer. There is something in this recognition that will save us all.

If you are to find yourself lost — when, when you are lost — which is to say, out of contact with the longing and its promise, know that getting lost is the very gesture that allows remembering, that dawning, that blush. Raise your head. Sniff the air, catch the scent. Something is calling you. How do you answer?

Consider fire then, the crackle and climb of it. The fury. The ache. The driving need to be done, to be something else, to shed and change and crack and rise.

A calling home that is never quite arrived at. The engine of longing for peace. Are we done yet? Are we done?

You circle the wagon of your self around this nebula. Whisper and croon. Call it seedling. Be the skin that divides the inside from the out. Be containment, shelter, pause. Trust the mystery. Love it, the unseen, unvoiced, unrealized churn of becoming. The mess of it. The inevitable imminent shell breaking. Willing to do both, to hold and to break.

 

There is a place of recognizing pleasure, the touch and greet of it, that is not quite inhabitance, not yet surrender. All the little hairs upstanding. Oh. Let yourself play with that field, the approach and withdraw. Feel the hum and throb of it rising in answer. There is something in this recognition that will save us all.

If you are to find yourself lost — when, when you are lost — which is to say, out of contact with the longing and its promise, know that getting lost is the very gesture that allows remembering, that dawning, that blush. Raise your head. Sniff the air, catch the scent. Something is calling you. How do you answer?