A photo and a reflection

I look at myself through my broken i[hone selfie camera. What I see back is something I deem as imperfect. Ugly, flawed, anything far from beautiful. How could anyone ever love this? I said to myself, an affirmation to why I’ve kept love away. Run from it like a gentle deer amidst a burning forest fire, I fled, though, now I realize the deer simply wanted to stay alive, a fleeing for self protection, preservation, safety. To live.

The voices and the noise in my mind, my beautiful and strong and intelligent and powerful mind, they speak and the squawk and they tried to keep me down, to question my actions, questions my knowings, my feelings, all things that I claim and label as my own, I wonder how these voices are able to get through. Shouldn’t I be better now? Shouldn’t I have already made my way through all of this? I thought I’d laid it all to rest, I thought I’ve moved on, I thought I was better and stronger now. Always needing to rise rise rise up, afraid that the end would come, the towers would fall, needing, desperately needing to hold, to grip to cling onto it all in case it all disappeared tomorrow. Why can’t I look in the mirror and see something, someone, that I love, that I wanna be close to, that I wanna be with, that I wanna lay besides, why is the reflection one that I critique so harshly?

“She’s really let herself go” they would say, and all I wanted to do was to open, so that maybe this all could come to a close. An end, a string misplucked on a meditation called ‘hope’.

Yet still my breath carriers me, my body moves me, and I have a couch underneath my body that supports me. I have friends out there fighting for justice, I hope that I am too, yet I wonder if the fight I need is one that is less with swords and words and firepower, and more instead with a deepening, a softening, a surrender back and in, a letting go in order to charge up and move forward with a being full enough to be able to overflow, to share in gentleness, to relax the nervous systems of those fighting the fight, so that decisions are made when we’re feeling stable and right.

I look to the photo now and see a face that’s been bruised and battered. Beaten and turned purple and blue. A spirit that’s been defeated, deflated, burnt out and running on fumes. Trying to find my way, stumble through this wild and unsure world. Trying to make things right, just wanting to see through, see through, see through, into the other side of all that this is.

I watch a man play his guitar in a busy restaurant, I view him through the screen, the first to see this creation he’s bringing forth. Those that sit in the back chatter at a low hum. I question the words that come to my mind, is this enough? Am I enough? How painful our spoken and unspoken critiques of ourselves and others burn. Like bug bites on the skin, they cease to harm the magic that’s inside of us yet they itch and they burn and they tear us away from the moment of living, of experiencing the soft surrender into love. ‘Just love’ a glowing yellow sign says above their heads. I pray and I hope that he’s finding his way. fingers gripping again, and what am I supposed to do? I wish to vomit all this pain from me. Yet instead, like the great oak, I root down, I connect to the network that’s all around me, mycelium and heart, and I feel the sway. Must I be in direct company to make my day? To save face? To make it all seem right and okay again?

Did I beat myself black and blue in order to understand you? Is this helping me at all? Is this helping you?

How can I show up as I am if I have not ever really done enough? Why is there so much heartache in the world? How do we fix it? Why do I feel like I’ve constructed myself into a problem to be solved?

Voices saying “woe is me” I must have compassion for me. For what needs to be shared is what needs to be said, what needs its rightful and easy and gentle release. Maybe I could smoke a cigarette and get away from everything it is that I am feeling, run into someone else’s story, someone else’s life, make it my own for some time so that I do not have to focus on my own, for the noise in my mind is strong and wishes to tear me down, like the 7 of wands, I persevere, knowing that the trusting of the self within, the guidance from within is the strongest force to follow in the climate of all that is.

A revolutionary in my own right, breaking away from the voices and the noise that tell me I am not enough, that I have to hide, keep quiet. Fears of persecution, I walk through a autopart store and hop across the checkerboard floor. Which space am I now in? How can I keep playing if I know that I will just loose? Is it worth it to keep trying? Am I really learning or should I just go under covers and hide?

And then I listen back in, the parts where I was free from the questioning, the chatter of the mind, the noise, the trying so hard, and I let go, and I let what needed to come through to land, to exist, to take up and fill the space. When and where fear was faced and dissolved. Brought into the forefront and overtaken with the power of soul. Of love, just love, I fight with love. Yet love is not a fight, yet at times we must fight for it. Fight for it within and then for others. To bring up that glowing golden orb of the heart into the light of our awareness and say “you are the most important thing to me and I am never letting you go. I am never backing down, I am never ceasing in my devotion to you, I am never running from all that you show to me, for you are true and you are real and you are everything it is that I need and more. You are very thing it is that I need and more” I speak out to my heart, to the void, to anyone that will listen. To myself. With compassion and with grace. There’s so many things that I could follow, so many things that I could do, so many routes to take, that will all lead me somewhere. And so I ask, “what are you really fighting against?”

And the answer comes forth through a restricted throat and a bundle of nerves that pinch and swirl in the left side of my belly, and I know that it is within being seen. Within being witnessed, recognized, and then harmed. For a heart that’s been cracked open, shines damn bright yet also is exposed. All is exposed. And from here, you could hurt me.

Though what of trust? What of surrender? What of faith and hope and love!

For if you can’t rise for us, do it for love, do it for love.

There’s many routes to take, many paths to travel, maybe many different destinations, too, yet what’s the point in traveling any of them, of walking them, of exploring them, if we do not have love as our guide, love as our steer person, love as our compass? North Star and everything we may ever need. How can I open up to this?

I stand my feet within the mud, rooted down, I hold the line, for this oak has learned to grow. To experience love without flow. Love within discomfort, love within unpredictability, love within conflict, love within dissatisfaction or disagreement, love amidst the deepest and darkest cold of a January Minnesota winter. -25° with people still on the streets, may their lives be honored and may their spirits travel safely into the unknown.

Is this what I have been built for? To know love, hold love, be love, amidst it all? Great seas of change, let love flow through me, become me. I will stand besides thee for all of eternity. For all of eternity, I will stand besides thee, hand in hand, rooted within loving sovereignty. Through any storms, any tsunami, my love only grows. Any destruction, any chaos, my love for you only grows.

And from here, I wonder, what is it that I am supposed to know? That a photo is simply just a photo? Doesn’t love need flow? Isn’t love the water as much as it is the land? The trees, the snow? The grime under my fingernails, the hollowness of a prayer rambled onward, love is still present there. Do we wander off beat, or do we rise hand in hand? Learn to dance together, and from here you will land.