A Million Tiny Pieces... Collecting, Un-Earthing, & Claiming... The Work of WHOLENESS in a broken Time...

"A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine." 
— Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)

We walked through the rooms one-by-one.
................................Places where, at one time, Life had unfolded itself.
The disparate pieces -
The meal upon that table.
The game of cards upon another.
The cup of tea held sedately in the delicate, aging china that held decades of story, memory in it's cells.
The quiet conversation on the perfect, wine-tinged chair.
 - that together wove into a seamless, textured Whole.  

The patchwork of Memory etched into each fiber, strand, & pore.  

Now standing there like recent ruins.
A testament to a history just presently come to a close.
And what remained stood before us:
precious articles from a freshly-minted museum, of sorts.
Whose patrons were but a devoted few - who knew the value of the remnants of this place.

..........

And we seized delicately upon the objects that held meaning for us each.  
Jotting down each as they appeared.

1. I will take the set of stained, porcelain bowls above the sink. (Because in them he prepared his daily breakfast of oats, quietude and coffee.  And if I were to wake early enough to join him, I could watch his eyes sparkle in a way the daylight hours never could reveal.)
2. Please set aside for me the faded jewelry box upon her vanity, and two of the delicate, silver rings she wore - too small to fit my own, thick fingers (but that will forever bring back the memory of her pale, bird-like hands - bent over a canvas, a drawing pad, or clutching a pen JustSo - as she spun some thing of loveliness into being on the page. )
3. The scarf, which, unbelievably still smells of her skin.
4. The wooden tray which his hands carved.
5. The photograph - of us four - which I had all but forgotten about.  (That when I place it by my kitchen door, shall cause me to alternately release a ragged, winsome sigh or jettison me to a place of bone-deep love & inarticulate Joy.  And serve to remind me...

That I was granted love.  Broken, imperfect, LayDownOnTheTrainTracks&OfferYouMyBreath sort of stuff.  And that will call me to remember - that I am what is left - what remains of that great force.  And shall somehow have to craft a way to let that great Hymn now sing through me.)
..................

And they brought it all up in a truck that was too large for the job of it's size.
And out came the dishes.
And the cutlery.
And the lamps.
And the artifacts of much of my own childhood joy.

And I stacked the perfect white bowls beside the chipped, mismatched assemblage of my own choosing.
And tried to see where they all found a place.
If, indeed, there was enough room for all of it to take up residence  - to peacefully co-exist - or if the advent of one spelled the exit of another.  

And they dragged the shiny, new (to me) piano in and set it in the corner.  
The one where her songbooks still lingered in the bench.
Where I had sat and played for them both and his voice had bulwarked it's way above the timid shimmer of tinkling keys.
The one whose strings had been recently tuned.

And we carried the old, claptrap, dissonant clunker we had had 'til now - out into the yard,
Where still it sits.
Unsure of what it's fate shall be.
Not quite ready to release it yet.
Not quite ready to belly up fully to the ShinyNew incarnation that's risen up to take it's place.

....................

They say that our cells replace themselves every 7 or so years.
That some piece of us is constantly in the throes of dying.
Another part undergoing the delicate & harrowing business of birth.

And we find ourselves in the midst of all this symphonic display.
Going about the business of this world.
All the while constantly discarding some snippet of ourselves.
Unconsciously incubating some new iteration we have yet to meet.

On some level, we know what it is - to live inside a body - a world - that is steadily breaking down.
Receding a bit each moment back to the Dust - cosmic or otherwise - from whence we came.

And yet, we continue to move toward Life.

And sometimes I am convinced that the work of this World - 
of the Life that we've been handed -
is to rally ourselves in steadfast service to the Light...
all the while realizing that Darkness sits by her side.

To do the work that is needed -
In this Time.
This Place.
To suture together what has come undone.
To Mend.
To heal.
To piece back together...

.....All the while still holding the broken, collapsing pieces of this world (& of ourselves) - inside our hearts and hands.

We can hold both.

It is the work to which we are called.

• To be the Teacher, and maintain the listening heart of the Student.
• To conduit Healing, even though we are all too familiar with our own deep wounds.
• To labor on behalf of An-Other, even though our resources feel inadequate to the task.
• To spend ourselves on things that will not reap immediate dividends nor rewards.
• To keep offering our small handful to the Larger Hand of Life.
  
  

Trusting that, if given from that seat of our own, deep, Imperfect Love....
It shall be Enough.

..............

On the heels of a delightful summer (that whispered of water and sunshine and starlight and friends and half-naked, sugar-laced cuddles splayed beneath the sky...), I find myself humbled by the onslaught of things unfolding now before us.

Of fires.
& hurricanes.
Earthquakes & devastation.
Of marches.
Hatred & brutality en masse.
Of corruption & ineptitude being played out in the highest ranks of the land.

And us... continuing to scroll on...
to curl up once more and see what's on TV.

& Of my own inability to do much to alter these things.

And yet....

I am reminded that there is room for All of IT at the Table.
There always has been.

And maybe my job is not to fixate upon the pile(s) of ugliness that I cannot alter.
But rather to heap Beauty - as much as I can - in great, steaming bowlfuls - wherever my heart and head can perceive the need - onto it, as well.

........

The work we do...
upon the mat...
upon the page...
the cushion...
behind the canvas...
beneath the open sky...
ya know - the seemingly innocuous & ineffectual "Inner" stuff....
prepares us to labor inside of this aching world.

We re-learn the basic truth:
That steering toward and tending the Light
was never meant to jettison us out of the deep Dark.
But rather a means to see our way inside of it.