Reopening

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Maybe it’s not our outer world we need to reopen but our inner one.

The call to reopen everything gets stronger every day. But I believe here is a deeper calling, one that is leading us to reopen our inner world, our hearts and minds.

For too long we’ve been closed off to ourselves and one another. This pandemic is helping us deepen our connections as well as making the gap between some wider.

This external closing has disrupted lives and caused pain and fear. Lives lost, lost jobs, distancing from loved ones, and a whole lot of uncertainty about what the future holds has stirred up a lot of emotion. We have the opportunity, those of us who are safe and able, to take a moment to let our hearts and minds open to the larger world around us. When we do, we see there is an immense amount of pain and suffering for many of those who are not privileged in our society, those who are black, brown, Asian, immigrants, living in poverty, differently abled. We need to sit with this pain and our own discomfort. We need to witness the injustices brought to light by COVID-19 and realize we have been living with them for ages. And then we need to do something to make it right. I’m still learning what is mine to do, but I can begin by fully reopening my heart and mind. If we can all do that, then this suffering will not be in vain.

This too shall pass is something I often hear these days. It’s true, it will. But it’s so important we don’t let the moment pass without using it to discover what we’ve lost in our fast paced, externally focused world. And that would be the time and energy to deeply connect to others and ourselves, and to process and reflect on our experiences. It’s the only way to keep our hearts and minds open.

Winter passes into spring, night into day. Today will turn into tomorrow, but it is in this moment we create meaning, take action, become. Right now holds what will be because we get to make a choice. We didn’t choose this virus, but we get to choose how we’ll be in the world with it. We get to choose how we’ll treat others. We get to choose if we’ll use this moment to reopen from the inside out.

I Walk Through Webs of Memory

I walk through webs as I rise into morning.

Each strand a dream remembered,

not remembered. The threads broken;

I have lost all but the emotional residue

which I carry with me into day.

Some mornings feel this way. Some mornings I literally walk through silken threads spun overnight by industrious spiders. Invisible strands stretch from hedges to vehicles. I break through and quickly brush those strands from my arms, hoping there wasn’t a spider attached.

The weaver and I have had an interesting relationship over the years. I am both repulsed and captivated by these intelligent creatures. They remind me to weave and not get caught in my own web. They remind me to give voice to the world in what I create. They are expression and expressor just as we all are.

I weave memories and dreams into poetry in order to capture something of those moments. I spin words into gifts. And once I gave some of them to my mother.

About a year or so be she died, I sent her some poems. Poems of memories. Poems that spoke to her in a way I couldn’t. She didn’t say much, but I understand. There’s too much to say, and so I spoke through my poems and she listened. Together we met in a way we never did before.

My mother has become memory and dream and I rise into the past at times so I don’t forget. I weave and I weave hoping to capture something of what was.

And then the thread breaks and the moment floats off, carried by time as the present takes back its place.

Last month my brother saw a sparrow at his window every morning for about a week. It peered in at him as the sun rose. He wondered if it was Mom checking in on him. And then it stopped coming. And then a sparrow landed outside my window every day for a few days, and I wondered.

In those moments of wonder she lives, everything lives. The past and present woven together capture us, and we know what is true. Finally, we know.