To remember the miracle of life is to grieve how often it is forgotten

This painting is called “Bleached Bones”... there is one figure cut out of the canvas and in its place is a sheer silk, the other figure is wrapped around that absence. 

“Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch...a holy thing”....(Yehuda Halevi)

I have been desperate to be seen and held in the reality of my impermanence. I know that may seem ridiculous or even morbid. But I feel I cannot be loved very well without that truth being acknowledged. Without sharing space in that awareness, I do not feel fully seen for who and what I am. I would like to be approached with a combined courage and tenderness derived of that awareness, where we can recognize that we are only here for a little while, so we should not reserve following our heart’s desires for later on, since “later on” is not guaranteed. I want to be treated with the consideration and quality of presence that you would give someone that has a limited time to be cherished and appreciated. I want to be given my flowers while I am here, in every sense… I don’t want to ever lose sight of the miracle that is the breath in my body and the pulse in my veins. And while I also don’t want to experience that miracle being forgotten by someone else, that is beyond my control.

I can hardly explain the rage and underlying hurt that I feel around this collective denial of each other’s preciousness and the preciousness of life. I feel in perpetual mourning for all of the children who are not seen for how miraculous they are because of their parents being overburdened and under-resourced in managing the stress of their lives and their own unresolved traumas, and living in a culture which has selectively valued some lives over others…those children who also then grow up and continue to feel unworthy and unlovable in their adulthood and who carry those disempowering beliefs into their experiences and relationships, reinforced by intersecting webs of oppression and the illusion of value that has been instilled by capitalist fairy tales of accumulation and achievement.

I can not force anyone to awaken to the reality of how precious they are which is really to also have to awaken to the pain of how that preciousness has been denied in their lives by their families and friends and partners and our cultural belief system and the necessary grieving of all of that denial. To remember the miracle is also to grieve how often it goes on being overlooked and forgotten. In turn, I can not force anyone to understand how precious that I am either, without compelling them to confront this deep loss born out of how we both unconsciously and methodically undervalue and under-engage our lives, all despite death’s constant presence. I cannot change the behavior or beliefs of others, but I can live as an example by choosing to experience myself and others with the sensitivity required to honor this shared miracle of existence. I commit to remain present with the simultaneous beauty and horror of all that is, without denial. I want to worship what is god in everyone, and believe that god is the essence of what is present in life, the breath within the breath. I want to cherish and worship and share the miracle of this body and it’s capacity to love and experience being. I also want to cultivate enough spaciousness within my attitudes and psyche that people can be free around me if they are ready to be free. By releasing all of the negative projections of judgment from my consciousness. as I see and love myself and recognize how I am reflected in all aspects of being, anyone can then feel seen and loved if they are ready to be seen and loved.. But I cannot force anyone to want to be free. I cannot save anyone from themselves and it is neither appropriate nor kind to deny someone the right to have dignity in their chosen suffering.

There is nothing to fear about impermanence. Its embodied awareness brings clarity to our ways of being and adds quality to our presence and attention. Reminding ourselves of impermanence can encourage us to be generous with the authentic expression of ourselves and to cultivate an attitude of appreciation and warm regard for others, inclusive of their limitations and the ways they may challenge us. but the ways in which we take each other’s presence for granted through judgment and withholding of love is certainly a torment to watch and to feel. Though nothing is guaranteed and everything is hanging in its balance by only the most fragile of strands, we still wish to live distractedly and complacently, to deny death and to reinforce our separation from each other. those behaviors require a tremendous amount of energy that could otherwise be expressed in nurturing ourselves, our relationships, and our communities through care, compassion and creativity… energy with which we could bear full witness to and embrace the miracle of being here together.

Despite our bodily impermanence, our souls are eternal and that is all the more reason to connect to and act upon the soul’s deepest desires and to work to cultivate soul level integrity and self esteem as best we are able to in this lifetime rather than tightly gripping our grudges and our petty complaints and creating hierarchies based on ideals of inferiority or superiority within our differences from one another. We utilize so much of our precious life force and energy feeding the insatiable drives of our ego and attempting to escape our anxieties and fears.

We end up starving ourselves of the very love and acceptance that would support us in undertaking the transformation that we seek. When we can allow ourselves to have an internalized anchor to unconditional love and worthiness, our life can be built out of an ongoing experience of our joy and purpose and true connection, rather than out of fear and lack. We can embody a self esteem and a courage that is inextinguishable by failure, rejection and abandonment because we don’t have to externalize our sense of our value. We become internally referential, driven and motivated by desire that connects us to our soul’s fullest expression, rather than acting in reaction to or in anticipation of the responses of others.

Your worth has always been and always will be inherent to your existence. 

I bear witness to the preciousness and the miracle of your life. 

I grieve and mourn all the ways in which your preciousness has been forgotten, overlooked and denied.

I pray we learn to hold and experience each other in way that honors the full truth of our humanity, its impermanence and its miraculousness. 🖤