RiversGrace

Navigating the Sacred and Mundane

Friday, January 12, 2007

Love in the Meadow



This blank page, after the underground of winter sleep, is fresh air in the light of day. All morning, details. Yet I walk from room to room, followed by a wide meadow. The living green, morning lover, whispers – Write, Prema. Write with me.

Perhaps this is one joy in the second half of life. All the years of stalking love in the form of men, messy and heartbreaking and incomplete. Now, alone at my desk, eyes closed, head tipped back and up to the sky to receive…

And the phone rings. “I forgot the car seat,” he says. (You know when you’re on the edge of an orgasm, tipped over the edge just enough to taste it, then abruptly pulled back?) “I just sat down to write, jeez.” Gathering myself up from invisible velvet grass, “Ok, I’ll be there in a sec.” And I lament the other feature of the second half of (my) life. Just when I’m feeling the love, the private red light of motherhood flashes. I curl back into myself for an extenuated minute, linger in embodied water where lungs in every cell fill with the prayer: please let me remember that I am still a woman, still able to feel pleasure, still able to give pleasure, then jump up with honed precision.

Mothering - always an open cave. But now I fly, an unnested eagle looking for my girl. Talons out, I follow a signal in the air, her body already in my body.

A beautiful quote offered up by Mystic Wing righted me this morning, and so I was a generous person to my husband as I moved the car seat from my jeep to his. Collecting missing sippy cups, stray dolls, strewn diapers, he walks up behind me as I clean his car. “Sorry,” and I know he waits for the retort. But not today. “It’s ok, sweetie, I forgot, too. Thanks for taking her for awhile.” Kisses in passing, love pats, and I think to myself that he’s hot as I return to my seat, longing for the meadow.

In marriage we have a million daily choices to offer love or fear. I am guilty of sloth in this regard and it feels good to find the accurate label. And this is how we grow: a million slow turns toward redemption and renewal. Can I allow myself to begin again? For the hundredth time in a day will I tend to my wounds in a corner of thought or a corner of the room or while I wash dishes, then walk back to him as the beginner and gift my innocence for our mutual benefit?

This is the new sex. We must undress ourselves. In front of ourselves. That’s the first act of love. And then if we choose to share, it’s conscious, eyes wide open, where intention meets the grace of a hand on a button with integrity that beautifies the eyes. Through all the bullshit, all the hurt, all the stories, all the reasons to be right…we just step out of those clothes and find the real opening to the real clothing that warms a body of original light. As David Whyte offers in his poem, The Faces at Braga:

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

Why is this sometimes the most terrifying gesture? That even in the privacy of our reflection in the mirror, we retreat? And why do I assume I am the same woman, same identity from last year, last decade, while I watch the body/mind change, one with the current of clouds across every daily sky?

There was the time of searching. The time of teachings. The time of learning by falling, and by refusal to learn, the dragging through dark landscapes. And now, though I turn and look this way and that from a position with perspective, I know it is time to commit. Let the teachings and the life marry. Make vows...no more living together or secret affairs with mood and fancy. It's time to let the ritual engulf the doubt and come off yet another long road of wandering.

May the writing serve this purpose. And may the community of companions make witness and hold me to my vows.

7 Comments:

Blogger Amber said...

Beautiful post, Prema. And something I think most of us can relate to... Things change. We change.

I need ro read this again, because your words always make me think. Thank you for that.

:)

8:50 PM  
Blogger Nancy said...

WOW! There is so much to feed on and digest in this piece. I will read and re-read and feel inspired by your words. Thank you for your wise perception and for sharing from a place that so many of us can connect to.

5:33 AM  
Blogger Jerri said...

Lovely, lovely, lovely, Prema.

"immobilized. . .by the weight of things undone." Lord, how much of my life have I spent in exactly that state.

I amdelighted to make witness to your writing and your purpose. It's pure pleasure to read your words.

2:51 PM  
Blogger Jess said...

Oh Prema, this is such a beautiful post. So many wonderful lines here... I am honored to be part of your community on this path.

I love David Whyte. And I love this: "Through all the bullshit, all the hurt, all the stories, all the reasons to be right…we just step out of those clothes and find the real opening to the real clothing that warms a body of original light."

I am so glad to be seeing you soon!

4:35 PM  
Blogger Michelle O'Neil said...

Happy Birthday!

Happy New Year!

Write, write, write!

7:04 PM  
Blogger holly said...

exactly what i'm talking about, beautiful! we're he're to belay, you can climb safely.

can't wait to see you.

9:38 AM  
Blogger Carrie Wilson Link said...

GORGEOUS writing. "This is the new sex," love that. Love this post beginning to end. Gorgeous, I've just gotta say it again!

8:12 PM  

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