Fear and Awe
I don’t know where to start so perhaps if I just start then the magic of the writing will open passages and pathways that I do not know or suspect. Imagine a dancer, a whirling dervish, faster and faster he spins until the world that he knows becomes a blur all around him. And as it blurs and melts into a single smudge of moving colour and sound the stillness at the centre begins to reveal itself. A single flower opening against a backdrop of darkness and stars.
What do you feel when you push your heart up against the world? Do you feel the thrum and buzz of the great cities, their millions speaking, singing, weeping? The wheels turning the blood spilling. The desperation and the greed. The love and the kindness of simplicity. Do you hear the vast silence of the empty plains where bears still walk and moose feed on the hanging moss that decorates the ancient branches? Do you sense the fear of death that bites at our heels causing us to dance this foolish dance, jigging like fools to avoid those black eyes that ask all the questions to which we have no answer? What is it that comes for you when life peels away the suit of pretence from your body and lift your heart in vulnerability and courage? What have you pushed away in order to keep up the wonderful dream of you and all that you think you are? When it comes in close can you look with calm eyes, will your legs be strong. Will you tremble? You will. None can stand unmoved at that altar where your life and death are like blood drops on a perfect cloth of new snow. All that you have done, all your dreams and hopes are written there. The times when it felt as though you shaped the clay of life as easily as a potter at the wheel. The times when life had you in its hands moulding and shaping, breaking and remaking. When your heart danced in light and when you watched as the earth you love above all things was turned to ashes and coin.
Those who say that death or life holds no fear for them are lying or deeply impoverished. Fear is a gift. It dwells with awe. It leads the way to our humility and the place where we may stand in witness to ourselves not as we imagine we are but as the scattered seeds of the universe tree. Beings of light and depth. Of insignificance and impermanence. Our nature is deeply contradictory and no less wonderful for that. We ache for the meaning that we are. We search for a single spark whilst we live in fields of light. We speak of truth and awakening while the breath sings of a love that does not cease. Standing together and speaking of our particular heartaches we draw closer to the place where we burn.
The Sufi turns. The heart rises. Silence and sound are one. What remains? When the fire dance has taken it all. When life holds this one in its hands and I lose everything I was in the creases of her palm. Two old men laugh beneath a grey sky. The river runs and chuckles. Somewhere raindrops fall on feathers and the sun ignites the frosted grass. My knees meet the earth and suddenly the cathedral is everywhere.
May the new year draw the truth from our hearts and may all remember the natural dignity of silence. There has never been one quite like you. Peace be upon you, within you and around you.