My blog. My rules. Just Sayin'.
I have been in a right bizarre circle this past six months.
For me, the hard road is the one that yields the best fruit and I find that as I circle this same damn fruitloop of an intersection over and over again, eventually my own momentum spits me out. Then, there is that hard landing on your ass part that is unpleasant at best, and downright painful at its worst. Here I sit, again, ass sore and raw from a thousand botched landings, wondering if THIS TIME I might just be able to get this right.
It is an unfortunate truth of life with PTSD that you experience your story as a series of repetitive events---events which do not resolve until the emotions that were originally associated with them are experienced and put to rest
So, you live life on this circular spiraling path.
Lately, mostly I circle drains.
In the spirit of changing that dynamic... here's something I'd like to share from the vault of things that sprang into being as a result of the difficulties I have lived. It is an excerpt from a larger work, but it strikes at the core of what I want to amend right now, right here:
From Tenure of a Mystic, Mvt. 5 "Communion" (link to the whole poem: https://www.scribd.com/doc/304893477/Tenure-of-a-Mystic-A-Symphony-in-Five-Movements):
The dark is not
because of us.
We did not make it
on our own.
We borrowed it when needed
to hide our pain
to cloak our rage
to mask our sin.
No one knows this better
than those who’ve
suffered from the dark
that others used
to mask their sin
to cloak their rage
to hide their pain.
BUT—victims who seek
justice
often fail to look
past judgment
and He clearly told us
we could not know the hearts of men
but what is pain to do
but seek redemption, rescue, and release?
It’s hard to see what’s real, what’s true
when all around you is deception
blame and muffled screams
of victims and of perpetrators lost to God
by sin and power.
Power chooses, steals His children
and in isolation
re-enacts a chain of pain
so ancient no one to this hour
can remember
there was a source.
There is a cure.
My mother tried to school in me the ancient curse:
She taught me that if I would listen I could KNOW, and then believe my eyes:
the difference between Good and Evil.
The fruit of the tree
a nightmare—
so like unto God but never God—
able to see but not redeem
Was that the agony, my Lord?
Could you see us as we were and know
we never really meant it
and know you could not stop us
know we could only be saved if we chose
You.
Yet, choice demands belief
in what we cannot see
or else we choose
the visible
accessible
the tangible
which we can grasp
without the tourniquet of faith,
and choosing all too often
what regards us best
we fail
and cry to God
What NOW?!?!
The answer is preceded by a question—
“Do you believe that I can do this?”
The simplicity of which is only
truly comprehensible for those who have escaped
the strangle hold of reason and entitlement.
For me,
it is hard:
this seeing in the dark.
It draws me ever closer to this God,
this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
but fear is omnipresent:
my hourly battle of barricaded will
what will I see
what will I choose
what will I act upon
what will become of me
if I surrender
to His power, love and grace
and disappear
among the ruins of the desert
to serve in silence
in the dark
alone with Him I cannot see
but never am without,
surrounded by people
still harassed and harried
people with the power
each and every one
to harm, to heal, to kill, to serve
and using it
aware or not
that using it
is garden, desert, garden, death,
is resurrection, promised or implied,
is mechanism of damnation or redemption
action of imperfect elements
is body, blood transformed
in us to hoard and share
as we do deign to try
to BE the instruments of God.
The wisdom of the cave is you can see in the dark,
but only when you realize that you yourself are blind.
The wisdom of the desert is that those
who seek surrender, silence, weakness
always find Him, finding ALL.
The wisdom of the kingdom is that the children
of the Most High God
cannot be contained simply because
our need for power
consistently demands an ordered world.
The wisdom of communion
is that I could not once by force of mind
or force of heart redeem myself
but yet I am redeemed:
the mystery of the living God.
The songs of children I have loved and served—
become as flower petals on the path.
My fading earthly light
reveals revision of belief,
transfigured by His brightness
brought within
cassandra 33
brought along
each step upon the path—
a ransom and redemption.
Grace forgives our broken choices
while our human hands and hearts and voices
can yet salvage the imperfect soul within
because He gifted us with silence that resounds
He gifted us with sight to gaze upon the dark
and even those who see
the impossibility of Faith sometimes remain,
and choose belief
and choose to face each other
as we eat and drink of Him
becoming us
and reach together toward the eastward rising Son.
Soðlice
-cassandra
revised 2009
