Lost

By

Photo by Alice Popkorn, via Flickr Creative Commons License (link below)
Photo by Alice Popkorn, via Flickr Creative Commons License (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/)

If you push, The Divine laughs. If you pull, The Divine laughs. And if you sit, The Divine says, “Another one ready for enlightenment.”
~ Derek O’Neill, from More Truth Will Set You Free

I am the light, light, light, light of my soul. I am beautiful. I am bountiful. I am bliss.
~Snatam Kaur

I’m lost, I said, relieved to have found a word to describe the struggle.
Stay lost, said the voice in my head.

*****

My husband and I had a painful conversation this morning. It turns out that who I feel I am on the inside doesn’t necessarily match his experience of me on the outside. At least not right now.

I went for a walk after he and Ada left for school, hoping that moving my body would calm the internal push-pull of this place I find myself in. Immersed in my thoughts, I almost ran into a Great Blue Heron crossing the path. From ten feet away, I watched him take slow, tentative steps, then dissolve into stillness once he reached the other side. A few more steps, then stillness. I ached to see him soar, majestic, no longer tentative.

Halting steps. Stillness. He wasn’t ready to soar. Tentative, but clearly not lost.

And so I sit, allowing this illusion of Lost to fill me, to crack me open. Lost is teaching me to step aside and let life live me. Lost is where I need to be.

I’m dissolving into stillness, slow, tentative steps on either side. I find myself here, in this place, reminding myself (and maybe you)…

Lost can be perfect, sacred, holy.

Because we’re not really lost. We’re just not ready to soar.

 

Comments

  1. Lost is a construct of a culture.
    When I think of Lost, I think ” not all who wander are lost”
    I think” every time I find myself, I take myself off to be lost again”
    for the journey is..
    and yours is a beautiful one
    sacred and real.

  3. Hi Alana,

    Your heartbeat and something beyond touches me so…….and a million words cannot convey what I long to say but perhaps this poem is a good bridge.
    Love
    Paola

    Hush my soul
    It’s time…to lie
    And pour your chocked grieving
    in my womb
    Restrain yourself no more
    The boundaries of self-containment are falling away
    Winter suspended
    Life particles trapped in icicles
    Gently,
    timidly,
    slooowly melting way.
    Each drop dense with content yet to be felt
    Patiently………………

    longingly waiting,
    to exhale into freedom.

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