Eco-Mystical Uncertainty

I used to be rocked and rattled by an apprenticeship with the eco-mystical uncertainty of these times. Shattered, some days, by the immensity of beauty and heartbreak, love and injustice, wonder and fear. And in the shattering I could feel the attempts I’d make to restore the previous shape of me.

And then a dream found me (about eight months ago). Glass, shattered before me. An emerald green energy flowing through every strand of my hair (as all energy flowing through me in dreamscapes since childhood has been emerald green). My bare palm pressing against the shattered glass. And then, like an earthquake moving through my skin and bone and fascia from the heart of me, a green surge of energy fusing the glass together. But the places where it shattered remain articulated. Forever marked by its shattering. And I am reciprocally belted back by the connective force created in the space between myself and the glass, laying with a felt sense of being full and emptied out.

I no longer feel a frantic urgency in these times. Rather, I feel, like these ones surrounding me, - the ancient Juniper of these lands - rooted in a relentless devotion that asks me to continuously spin toward the raucous cries of a world painstakingly shapeshifting toward an unknown future that is made possible by those who have come before, and by the knowing that I too am an ancestor residing in the present amongst other ancestors.

When I shatter and feel my insides spilling into the ground of everything, I feel the wings and arms of me stretching wide to scoop up and draw close the tear- and blood-soaked pieces that carry the memory of previous shapes. Memories who gravitationally pull at each other, loving one another in unfathomable ways. Memories that are not just mine. Passed through the cellular fabric of Life’s complex entanglements, I can feel the precision in my existence.

Not a destiny where all the steps are set ahead of time, but a becoming-with the rest of life that clambers, crawls, slithers, swims, swings, and flies from the chasmic edge of emergence that braids the worlds of past, present and future together.

Instead of frantic urgency, I feel the trembling and raw exposure of my vulnerable heart that beats and thrums with the heart of the world. I feel the way every second becomes sharpened, cutting through the haze that can settle, muffling the wonder residing in every breath. It’s exquisite and excruciating. But what’s the alternative? To live as if we could control the brilliance of a world folding in upon itself and stretching out toward yet-to-be-known shapes? I think not.

The laughter of my child is like a gem forged in the fire of the Sun. The caress of my lovers hand along my stomach, a once-in-a-lifetime hymn. The smell of spring snow, a ceremony whose like will never be seen again. The sound of turkeys gurgling to the expectant dawn, a portal that opens into the jaws of a death that promises life.

Somehow, I’m alive. Mysteriously, I exist. And I am a thread in a tapestry woven from the unthinkable and unspeakable. And my longing compels me to think and speak of what is far too immense to ever truly name. But my body knows it. Oh yes, my body knows it.