A Conversation with God That’s Lasted a Long Time

 

I learned once, years back, a lesson about prayer.

And it was this: When you pray, be specific. 

 

So I prayed and I asked, “God, please send me someone to love.”

And I waited. And I waited some more. And when I had waited for so long that I thought loneliness would break me inside, I asked again.

 

And God said to me, in the way that God does, “I have answered that prayer. I have answered that prayer for more than 30 years. I have made you a caregiver, a healer, a labor and delivery nurse and a school nurse and a public health nurse and a nurse midwife and now a Hospice nurse. I have sent you hundreds and hundreds of people to love. And you have loved them. You do love them, don’t you?”

 

I had to concede that God had a good point.

 

So I asked God to send me someone with whom I could be intimate. 

And I waited. And I waited some more. And when I had waited long enough that I was aching, I asked again.

 

And God said to me, “I can’t imagine anything more intimate than being with someone as they are being born or being with someone as they die. You have shared experiences with people more intimately sometimes than anyone ever has.” 

 

“Remember that first baby you delivered in the mountains? How that young mama wrapped her arms around you and held on to you for dear life waiting for that long labor to end? And trusting every word of encouragement you whispered? Remember the woman in Virginia who danced her baby into the world, dancing with each person in the room, including you? Remember the young girl who told you about being raped – how she trusted you with something she had never ever shared with anyone and about it still haunted her every day? Remember how free she was when she finally shared that burden with you and you broke the chains just by sitting and listening and holding her hand? Remember the woman who becamse your friend who was slowly wasting away with cancer? How you both watched her body dwindle to skin hanging from bone and how you were the one she could look in the eye and tell how sad she was to see it? Remember the man whose hand you held so tightly as he took his last breath? His last memory was the touch of your hand? That is intimate, is it not?”

 

My response? “Touche, God. You are right again.”

 

So I asked God, “Send me someone who can hold me up when I am hurting, hug when I am afraid, touch me tenderly when I am sad, laugh with me when I just need to laugh”

 

And God said, “I have sent you what you need. They are called sisters and brothers. They are called friends. And they have loved you for a long, long time and held you through some pretty rocky patches” 

 

So I asked God, “Send me someone with whom I can share all of myself.”

 

And God said, “I am right here.”

 

So I thought and thought some more and I finally said, “God, please send me someone with who I can…… well, you know…… you know……be wild and passionate with and…… you know…..”

 

And God said, “Ah, yes. About that.”

 

“When you are ready, I will send someone to share the sacred landscape of your body and soul. You will have to trust me on this one and you will have to be patient”

 

And so I wait. I may wait till I’m worn and old. Maybe I am too old for that now? 

 

Nope. The longing is still there. I wait for the person who will wake in the night to the sound of my breathing and kiss me from sleep, breathing life into me like the wind in a thunderstorm. Who will touch me in a way that no one else can and no one else will. 

 

And I said to God, “Thank you. I can wait. I won’t die without it.”

 

And God said, “Touche”.

I can't remember a time in my life when I ever felt so alone and so connected simultaneously. It's strange, confusing, touching, moving, sad, sweet, and breathtakingly beautiful all jumbled up together. I know that I have had times when I was more alone - August 2006 when I sent my youngest to college and drove to the Eastern Shore of Virginia with a moving truck full of everything I owned, alone, and armed only with a heart full of hope. Or the long winter of 2010-2011, when I was hunkered down in a log cabin on top of a mountain with just my sweet dog Baby and my weirdo cat Buster for company, trying to make sense out of a wrecked life, a wrecked love,  a wrecked dream. Or the summer of 2017, when I was still grieving my mother's death and my sweet Baby died, leaving me with a house too quiet to be stood, but no energy to go anywhere other than work because anything more was just too much for me to manage.

This pandemic and the need for social distancing (isolation) and the fear that comes with it, this aloneness is different, more heavy, more necessary, more important, but somehow much harder. It has been a long, long time since I have felt want of or desire for someone to share my day-to-day life and all the intimacy that entails. But that wanting is there. Is it the same for you others who live alone? I want a hand to hold. I want a shoulder to lean on. I want to curl my belly along the curve of someone's back and draw myself in close, listen to someone's dreaming as I fall asleep (or lie sleepless!), and feel the rise and fall of the breath of life moving in and out of someone's chest. I want to be driven crazy by someone's proximity! I want to cringe at the sound of someone chewing with mouth wide open! I want. It is as plain as that. I want.

I have come home to my music, at least. At last. In my music, I find a connection and an intimacy with my inner ....... what? Spirit? Being? Artist? Soul? God?  "Yes" is my answer there. All of those things and something that doesn't have a word in any language that I know. I am so grateful to have crossed the many miles I had to travel to find my way back home to that part of me. I knew that I was missing it, but I didn't know I was missing myself for lack of it. But I was.

So in the midst of loss and grief and sorrow and solitude and confinement and longing, I find a deep wellspring of gratitude. I have always said that gratitude will save your life. I know that, many times now, it has saved mine. I am grateful for the joy and comfort I find in letting my fingers find their way along the next of my guitar - a way they know by heart. I am grateful for the beauty I see all over the world, in Facebook pictures and You Tube videos, of people coming together and opening their hearts. I am grateful for friends reaching out, touching base, reconnecting. I am grateful for dreams of touching another person one day, hugging tightly, kissing sweetly, laughing softly, resting my head against the chest of another and hearing the soft thumping of a heart in motion.

I am hopeful that I will survive this as will all of the people I love so dearly.

I am hopeful. And I am grateful to be home. However lonely it might feel, I am safe and I am well and I can keep singing, praying, hoping, and whispering "thank you" as the dawn breaks on another day.

Peace, y'all.

Time marches on and does not waver, does not stop.
The intensity and the inevitability of aging threatens to overwhelm my happier self.
I want to be as young in my body as I am in my spirit.
I was born an old soul with a fiery, fighting spirit.
My soul now calls my spirit to take her place among the crones.
My spirit rebels even as my body, tired and weary, longs to simply be still and be whole.
She cannot be young.  So my body resolves she would settle for still, free of aching and longing.

Set me on a road, dear God, that leads up into the mountains.
Let me wander, untethered and at peace.
Let me walk in the quiet and marvel at the beauty and the grace of living things.
Let me capture my restless spirit in the breath of the wind
And settle her down in the curve of the mountain path
To listen to the ancients
And be as one of them
Constant and alive
Holding the light as it sinks in the west
Breathing out the pain of age by breathing in the gratitude of living.

----September 15, 2019

Little Bird grew restless in the nest.
It was crowded and noisy and messy.
The Wind called, "Come away with me and see the far away world. You were meant to fly!"
So Little Bird flew to the Wind and the Wind carried her far, far away.
She flew over the sea to the other side of the world and back again.
She flew over mountains and deserts and fields.
She flew through storms that were dark and dangerous and frightening.
She flew to the top of high cliffs and mesas where she could see for miles and miles.
She flew to places so sad that her heart ached with sorrow.
And she flew to places that were so beautiful that she was breathless and no melody could come to her mouth to sing of the wonders she beheld.
She flew until her wings were ragged and torn.
She flew until she was full and then weary of flying with the Wind and the storms and the skies.

Little Bird flew back to the nest.
She had heard Mama Bird calling in her dreams.
Mama Bird had never stopped watching the skies and she smiled when Little Bird came home.
She sat upon an old high branch alone in the evening sun.  Her feathers glowed in the fading light with all the colors that ever were made.

"What have you learned from all your miles of flying, Little Bird?"

"I have learned that I am resilent," said Little Bird, happy to have learned such a big idea.
"Ah, yes!", said Mama Bird, "That is an important thing to learn."
"And what else did you learn, Little Bird?"
Little Bird thought about all she had seen and all that she had learned.
And she said, "I have learned that there are storms that try to swallow me whole and storms that try to send me the wrong way.  There are storms that try to break my wings.  But there are also storms that are only in the sky and the rain never reaches the ground."

"And?", asked Mama Bird, her bright eyes glowing with that knowing Mama Bird light.

Little Bird looked up to the high branch.  Night was falling and all she could she was a shadow where Mama Bird once sat. Night was coming and Mama Bird would soon be gone.

"I learned that I miss you, Mama Bird!! I miss your wings and the way they held me close to your beating heart and kept all the storms at bay!  I miss the sound of your song in the morning when the day is new and everything is possible.  I miss the way you showed me how to fly even though it meant that I would go far, far away!"

"And what else, my little love, my little chickadee?"

"I learned that there are other wings, Mama Bird - all over the world - who will hold me if I need.  They do not feel like your wings, Mama Bird, but they are good wings, safe wings, wings filled with love!"

"And?"

"And I have wings for holding, too!  My wings can shield other Little Ones and keep them safe when the storms come!  Little Ones who never had Mama wings to hold them close. My wings, even though they are worn and torn and some of my feathers are broken - my wings can wrap around the Little ones who are afraid and give them shelter."

"And what of God, my little Love?  What did you learn of God when you flew so far from home?"

"Oh, Mama Bird!  I learned that God is everywhere!  He is in the mountains and in the valleys.  He is in the storms and in the calm.  He is in the pain and the sorrows and He is in the joy and jubilation. He is in the eyes of the Old Ones and the hearts of the Little Ones.  And I can hear his song everywhere I go."

"Yes! Now you have it, Little Bird.", said Mama Bird, a laughing sort of sound in her singing voice.

Little Bird heard her wings take flight with a soft, rustling sound, like a whisper and a prayer.  She looked up to the high branch but she couldn't see Mama Bird anymore.  Her night had come and Mama Bird had flown on.

"I love you, Mama Bird!!", Little Bird cried out into the night.  "I love you!  I always did and I always will!"

Far away, out where the stars were shining, Little Bird heard Mama Bird singing.  Long and low and full of joy and tenderness and peace, Mama Bird's song echoed across the skies,  "And I, you, Little Bird - my love, my chickadee!  And I, you."

She sat in a chair with her back straight and her head hanging down
A young woman.
Though maybe not so young.
(Everyone seems so young to me on the days when my bones are aching and I am tired.)
She was pretty and delicate and had small hands with fingers that tangled and untangled themselves
As though they were keeping rhythm to a song inside her body and couldn't be still.

"How are you?" I asked.
Because I knew little else to ask but that.

"I'm doing okay" she answered.
She drew in a breath, with a tiny shiver, like a baby who is done crying and needs to sleep.
Her head lifted just enough for her eyes to meet mine.
For just a flash of a second, a nanosecond, a fraction of a blink of time,
A great well opened in the depths of her eyes, a window unshuttered,
And I could see in to a soul holding a candle of pain.

Quickly, the curtains were drawn tight. The chasm closed and all was still.
Her hands twitched and her breath drew in and held.
So brief was the moment, I might have missed it had I not been looking for her eyes.
But I had.

I felt a cracking in my chest, an opening up in my core, a small burst of flame and hot tears in my eyes; my soul coming forth.

I reached out to touch one of her small, dancing hands.
To let her know that I had seen and understood.
"Me, too," I said.
She looked to see if I was being truthful or fair
I knew that she knew.
"We see one another.  Your pain and mine."

Those of us that hold candles behind curtains drawn tight
See the light in others, brief but sure.
In all our hiding, in all our putting on our best faces and pretending that the pain is controlled or gone,
Our pain reflects itself back to us in eyes of others.
Like a window on a dark or rainy night.

I touched her because I wanted her to know that she was not alone.
And I wanted to be not alone.
To acknowledge that we are, so many of us, doing okay while not doing okay.
That candles of pain still are light that shines out to others.
That there is a place where light reaches - from you to me to all the young women with small and restless hands, moving forward, moving, coping, hanging on.

For my friend Bobbi waiting for a word

Autumn leaves
And winter follows
And night comes on so early.
Morning is a series of snooze alarms ringing and ringing and ringing again
Because my body is too slow in the chilly air
And wants to stay inside the nest of blankets and flannel sheets
To keep on dreaming.

Autumn finds me still in childhood anticipation of
New shoes and new pencil cases
And new teachers of new lessons
That might change the course of things and turn the page
On old stories that I want to leave behind.
I look for new friends on the old playing field and
Hope that I can finally be less different
And more alike-able.

Autumn finds me still in the thrill of later years
Twisting the schedule of week in and week out to free time
To be out in the falling leaves, sleeping in the chilly grass
Falling in love with the whole wild world.
Walking up mountainsides and seeing the breathless wonder
Of the world laid bare by the naked trees and the falling leaves.

Autumn finds me still in the longing of the days
When I stood waiting for the bus to stop at the corner
To let the children off.
Just to see their faces and hear the stories of their days,
Lighting up my hours of fog and fatigue
With memories of the wonders of childhood beginnings
And the grace of love that moves up and down and over and through
The generations of the fall leaf catchers and daydreamers.

Autumn finds me now at the start of the waning,
The coming to terms
And the reckoning of all that has been lost with all that I have gained.
I want to dream.
I want to wander out into the falling leaves and dance to the beat of the different drummer
That has always been me.
To be free at the closing as I was at the start
Of the tethers of grown up things that I have carried as I should but need no more to shoulder.
I want to play in the fields that are turning golden and calling to me to run.

Autumn leaves
And winter follows
And night comes on so early.
I am full.  I am satiated.
I am ready for sleep.
I am ready for dreams.
I am ready for wonder.
I am ready to roam out to where the cold meets the warmth
And the heart explodes with the ending and the beginning.
                   ---------for Bobbi, for my father and for my children, October 2013

The beauty of dreams.........

I haven't written anything here for a very long time.  Life has kept me too busy and too caught up.  I have been missing it - my writing.  All of my writing has been missing from my life.  And it's a part of me that is constantly pawing at the surface, trying to find its way out.  I have a new song, slowly growing inside with a whole concept and lines coming together little by little.  I have several poems brewing.  I have thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts fighting for my attention, longing for some avenue of expression.  And I have this little voice that keeps whispering in my ear, saying "You know you'd feel better if you'd just get off your duff and let us out."  So here I am.

I had an experience today that brought about one of those clear and shining epiphanies that seeks a place to be heard.  An epiphany that wants to be thought out loud.  I want to share it.

A young woman, a coworker, who has become very precious to me, shared with me a dream she had.  She has had this dream once before, and it visited her again last night.  She said she dreamed that she was in a park - a beautiful place, so beautiful that it is one of those places that is only found in dreams.  And she was playing with her two year old son.  Her partner was sitting on a bench near by and there was another little boy, standing near him, watching her at play with her son.  The little boy just stood and watched.  Her partner finally asked the little boy if he could help him find his mommy.  And the little boy said, "No.  I'm watching her play with her other little boy."  Several years ago, my friend lost a child during pregnancy.  He was growing and moving and they were eagerly anticipating his birth, when he suddenly stopped moving and they discovered that he would be stillborn.  She still grieves for that little boy, everyday.  I can see it in her eyes.  Her grief does not govern over her, but it is always there.

I sat close to her and touched her arm and tried to be as still as possible.  She was allowing me the privilege to see a part of her soul.  I was so touched by her trust.  I could see her dream as clearly as if I had dreamed it myself.  The park, the color of the trees, the sunlight moving in the grass, and I could see just a brief glimpse of that little boy, who he was and still is in her heart.  Huge tears spilled over her eyes and down her cheeks.  She was so moved in the remembering of the little baby she lost and by the whisper of him from the place where he has gone.

I came to realize how beautiful this thing is - this ability we have as humans to dream like this.  What an incredible gift it is!  I said, "He's telling you he's alright."  And she cried, "I hope so! I hope sometime, I will see him again." 

And the epiphany for me was this:  it does not really matter where this dream came from.  Either way, it is an incredibly beautiful thing.  Perhaps it is a message.  I believe that such messages happen, though I know many people do not. I believe that there is but a very thin veil that separates us from those we love who have gone on before us.  And if there is a way that their essense comes back to us - in dream or vision or guidance or protection - that truly is powerful and exceptional beauty.  And if, as many folks would say, the dream was just her mind's way of creating a picture to comfort her - how cool is that?!  How amazing and awesome that her mind can do that - create a beautiful and lasting picture that connects her to a soul she only got to hold for a brief but profound part of her life.  Either way - it moves me very deeply.

I have been thinking about my father these days.  So much and so often.  Yesterday marked four years since he died and went on ahead.  I am so lonely for him sometimes.  But so many times, he comes to me in such beautiful ways.  In the way my sons express ideas, in the way my sister smiles, in the rising notes of a violin, in the very love I feel when he is in the middle of one of my childhood memories.  This, too, is beautiful.  The way my mind can hold him so closely.

I am reminded of Langston Hughes' poem about dreams - "Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go, life if a barren field frozen with snow."

I was humbled by my friend's dream and in her willingness to share it.  And I am grateful to have been allowed in to see it.  I have been saying, "Thank you" all evening.

Peace and love and light y'all.
I'll be back again soon.  I hope you will be, too.
Thanks for listening.