fearless heart

She had been his wife for 26 years. She had moved out of their house fifteen months ago, and the machinery of their formal separation was set into motion and the paperwork was final eleven months later. I have already told you about the long, painful process by which they came to this final event. It had been so long in coming that they both had regained much of their emotional balance even before the deed was done and quickly found themselves working side by side at the tasks and challenges of parenting the adolescent victims of the collapse. They talked comfortably and were considerate and mindful of each other’s needs and expectations and sensitivities. They knew each other perhaps better than they knew themselves, and with the distance and detachment of the divorce, they began to grow a friendship grounded in thoughtful kindness and respect and the mutual ground of parenting.

Their relationship had clear boundaries. Both had emotionally released the other to live their own lives. They did not meddle, and they would not use the kids as spies to pry into each other’s business. They were committed to the protection of the kids, and that was the core of their interaction. This common commitment made room for them to live at the edges of each other’s worlds with a remarkable degree of comfort. As time passed, they became increasingly at ease there.

Many of their friends, especially those who had had difficult and bitter divorces, found their civility difficult to believe. They either felt that it harbored some deep repressed anger, or they resented it, feeling that it illuminated their own failure to separate cleanly. This was, of course, untrue. The nature of their interaction spoke only of itself, and could not cast shadows nor light on the tribulations and trials of others. A few of their friends were openly skeptical of their civility, and warned them of the impending collapse of this wonderful harmony. But these people did not understand the powerful magic that had occurred. They did not know the secret of the fearless heart.

Up to this point, he had not shared much of his emotional passage through the separation with her, and did not know if he ever would, although he knew that she might someday read his stories. He was comfortable with this possibility, but felt no calling to actively pursue such disclosure with her. He did not actively conceal his journey from her either. He had learned enough from the pain and agony he had endured to know that hiding is never an adequate means of protecting a wounded heart. Since she had left, he had found a new freedom to open his heart and welcome the sorrows and terrors that he had never before been willing or perhaps capable of touching—torments he could never before have embraced with such enthusiasm as he now knew.

He was often overpowered with awe and reverence for the remarkable creative force that settled around him and provided him with strength and capacity and insight to venture into the dark and fearful places of his heart during the past year and a half. He had learned to welcome and embrace pain for the healing power that it brought to his deepest being when he let it work freely and without resistance. He had discovered, to his amazement, that the most ferocious bloodthirsty monsters in his soul could not kill him—in fact wished him no harm—but rather were angelic visitations from the greatest healer. As this reality proved itself over and over again, he began to see a new thing growing up within himself—his very own fearless heart.

the rules of the game

Martin was one of the best, and most trustworthy friends he had ever had. He too was a Texan, and understood the magic. It was difficult to explain, and most people without ties to the Lone Star Republic were oblivious to it. The mystique of Texas is something that even Texans are not fully aware of until they move away from the great expanse of its flatness and wide open horizons. The geography of the land of the armadillo is most remarkable for the vastness of its monotony. North of the Cap Rock, the high plains stretch beyond seeing—”as far as you can point yer hand.” 

The closest thing to mountains in the whole vast spread of Texas is the Cap Rock, a sudden drop from the high plains to the gulf plains a thousand feet below. The Cap Rock cuts the state “half in two” as his father used to say. The eastern part of the lower step is covered with the muggy humidity of the old south and sports a handsome stand of southern pines—the great piney woods. To the west is the blazing, bone-dry desert of cowboy movie fame. And sprawling out along the Gulf of Mexico, the plain slopes so gently into the sea that a wader can walk half a mile out into the water and only be chest deep in the gentle rolling waves. 

Corn and cotton and cattle and oil fields and gas wells and jack rabbits and tumble weeds abound, and wide empty highways run into eternity as straight as a laser beam. The incredible scope of unhindered monotony in the geography of west Texas perhaps breeds a unique creativity of thought out of sheer necessity. Without this  special trait, Texans would probably just wither and blow away in the hot dry panhandle wind.

Martin was steeped in the Texas arts. He was outspoken and brash and mostly from the non-Baptist branch of the dichotomy although he had not escaped it entirely and knew it well enough to be effectively sacrilegious and dangerous. He was a flaming redhead with an impish twinkle in his eye. He was intelligent and articulate and had a flair for exposing bullshit. Martin shared a trait that was common to Texans—he was a master of verbal creativity and wit. He always had an answer, and it was always compelling. His particular gift was in bringing clarity to a subject, and evaporating mists of confusion and uncertainty. Political correctness was sometimes useful to him but never sacred, and often a target for his amusement. He had a remarkable sense of balance, and equally enjoyed the sport in chopping both liberals and conservatives off at the knees when they offered him the opportunity. Martin’s outspokenness and willingness to poke the sacred cow had made both friends and enemies for him over the years, and he took it all in stride. It was just part of the game.

He moved in and out of contact with Martin over time, sometimes not seeing him for months on end and then shifting back into regular and frequent contact. The past couple of months had been a very active period, and it had been a good thing. One day he sent Martin e-mail venting his frustrations with women. He had commented in his note about how the rules of the dating game had changed since he had married and settled at the beginning of the ‘70s. Martin’s response was quick and concise and typically Martin:

“All rules are subject to change at any time by anybody.“Commitment is defined as one party wanting the other party to do as they are expected. Telling what the expectations are is optional. Most women do not seek commitment. They seek comfort and an end to their being afraid of being single.“Safe sex refers to preventing the transmission of disease only. Not having sex is not considered safe sex.“Tell the other party you are looking for commitment, until you get irritated by their behavior. Then tell them it isn't working out. This is how women do it to avoid feeling guilty about their just wanting a temporary good time. You can do it too. This is not dishonest, not really.”

Whether Martin’s assessment of the rules of the game was accurate and fair, he did not know for sure, but it rang true to the frustration and instability and confusion that he had experienced in re-entering the big strange world of dating and romance. And it was slightly reassuring to see it all in print.

memorial day again

It was Memorial day again—the second since he had been single. He supposed that it was like any other Memorial Day, but at the same time, it was a little different. He had planned no barbecues or picnics or excursions to the beach. On Saturday, his dogs had gotten out of his big back yard and wandered off to explore the much bigger world beyond the gate. He discovered that they were gone around dusk when he came home from a long afternoon of setting up a new location for his bees. He drove around in the fading light, confident that within a few blocks of home he would find the big shepherd mix and her scrappy little Shropshire terrier buddy sniffing bushes in someone’s front yard. His gate was broken, and he had run this drill with the dogs several times over the past year or so. But he didn’t find the dogs. They had escaped long enough before his return to have time to make their way out of the neighborhood—perhaps down to the creek bed on the edge of town, or off into another neighborhood. Thoughts of busy streets and foul play and dog catchers kept him from sleeping soundly that night.

Sunday he drove around some more, looking in vain for the dogs. They should be hungry by now and he had hoped they would show up during the night. Now he was truly concerned for their survival. He was most worried about the little one, who would not have gone far from home without his bigger friend to provide the carefree abandon necessary to get him into really serious trouble. Everything would probably be OK if they managed not to get separated and if they stayed out of traffic. He wasn’t confident on either point.

Finally, he gave in and went home. The mutts were gone. He would not bring them back by driving aimlessly around town.

The kids were planning an impromptu swimming party, and were working diligently at the tasks he had assigned them as preconditions for the party. The yard and house were getting more attention than he had been able to muster in quite a while. Late in the afternoon, half a dozen teenagers arrived with snacks and cell phones and cameras and swim suits and the party was on. He had little to do with the preparations and only felt obliged to be present and hospitable. The kids had planned it and neither expected nor wanted too much involvement from him. He barbecued some chicken that had been tucked away in the back of the freezer and needed to be used. It kept him busy and outdoors but without being too intrusive of the kids’ party and their space. As the afternoon and evening wore on, he found himself watching the street for the return of the wayward canines. They never came.

Memorial Day started quietly and still without dogs. The kids slept late, having moved the party from the pool to the movie theater after dark. He got up at dawn to move his hives to their new location before the field bees started foraging, and was home with a pot of coffee by nine o’clock. It had been long enough now that Animal Control might have picked the dogs up, so he picked up the phone. The only number in the book was for a county office in Morgan Hill, twelve miles to the north. The shelter was at a different location without a phone listing and he suspected that the office location would be vacant for the holiday.

As humans are inclined to do, he turned to a familiar solution, even though he thought it to be an unlikely one. The Gilroy Police dispatcher had called him dozens of times in the past three or four years to pick up honeybee swarms that citizens had called in to the 911 operator, and he knew the dispatch number from memory. He would call just to see if they knew who the right agency was, and how to reach them on a holiday. The police department certainly would know, and were many swarm calls in his debt.

Tina answered the phone, and to his surprise, she thought she knew his dogs. She sent an officer back to the kennel in the back parking lot at the station to confirm their description, and fifteen minutes later he was at the station getting the jailbirds released on his own recognizance. It was really good to have them back. He didn’t realize how fond he was of those dogs until they were crowded into the passenger seat of the Honda next to him, shedding on the seat and smearing their wet noses and drooling mouths against the windows and dashboard. They carried themselves with an enviable innocent nonchalance and carefree enthusiasm even though they had been caught red-handed and spent 2 nights in jail. When they got home, he fixed the gate.

He spent most of the rest of the day with his daughter, shopping for clothes for her and having lunch at Chevy’s and seeing a matinee of the latest Dennis Quaid movie. It was very good to spend the day with her and to know that the gate was secure and the dogs were safe. And so, this Memorial Day turned out to be just like any other—a vivid reminder of the fragile grasp we have on what we most take for granted—a tender moment to take time for those about whom we care most while we still have them with us.

the Colt and the canopy

It was 1978. He had been welding for about three years. He had known Gary for most of that time and they had worked side by side for much of it at Ace Tank and Equipment Company when it was still located on Elliot Avenue north of downtown Seattle. Gary was about the same size and build as him but with sandy blond hair that hung straight and limp to his shoulders. They both were Texans and shared lots of esoteric and colorful Texas culture and knowledge that the Washingtonians around them could not even imagine. They decided that language and thought were slightly different processes for Texans than for most other people, and the two young ironworkers formed a bond of friendship around their common heritage and slightly off-center Texas grit.

Gary was actually very lucky just to be alive and working. Both of them had done time on the bending rolls in the small-tank shop rolling shells for 500 and 1000 gallon tanks. Gary had achieved near legendary status the day he left his boot print pressed into the skin of a 500 gallon tank. He had stepped onto the flat sheet of steel as it fed into the rollers where it would be transformed by mechanical pressure into a cylinder. His attention had wandered, and suddenly his steel-toed boot was feeding into the rolling mechanism with the sheet of steel. Somehow, Gary managed to reach the cutoff switch just as the machine rolled to the back edge of the steel toe-cap in his boot. The footwear was destroyed, but Gary was unscathed except for his pride and his pounding heart. A fraction of a second more in the rolls and his foot would have been crushed, throwing him off balance and out of reach of the switch. The huge machine would have crushed every bone in his body if given the opportunity.

The tank was made, with Gary’s footprint clearly impressed in its shell, looking as if he had tried to kick his way out of it. Lectures on safety were given, and Gary was ridiculed and castigated for his absent-minded stupidity and congratulated for his big adventure. His boot print was the talk of both the large- and small-tank shops for weeks. The newer guys were impressed and a little more reverent toward the impersonal power of the massive machinery they worked with. The old-timers just shook their heads and chuckled grimly and swore quietly to themselves.

Texans fall into two broad categories: angels and devils. They tend to be staunch morally upright Baptists with rigorous ethical boundaries and taboos, or at the other extreme, hell raisin’, ass kickin’, bad-ass cowboys. There doesn’t seem to be much grey area in between. But oddly enough, even the most righteous Texas Baptist has a streak of that good old fallen nature that surfaces at unguarded moments in safe company.

Gary was impulsive and distracted and restless and a little bit off in his own world. He represented a different slice of Texas culture than his friend. There were no Baptists in his heritage. They were all white trash cowboys, preoccupied with drinking and shooting and driving trucks and big fast American cars and womanizing and cussing. Gary was outgoing and friendly and charming, with the impeccable formal manners that every southern boy learns from the cradle. He could charm the skin off a snake. But he was the most creative, prolific, uninhibited user of profanity that his Texas Baptist friend had ever met. He had a remarkable way of weaving genitalia and disease and perversion and insanity and violence and excrement into a descriptive phrase. His expressions were so vivid and original and revolting that he stirred admiration where admiration seemed immoral and reprehensible. “Cussin’” was an art form for Gary. He rarely lost his temper, and didn’t swear nearly as well when he did. Nothing delighted him more than to out-swear a hardened old irondog welder. And he could do it every time. The vivid disgusting imagery flowed freely and smoothly off his boyish tongue, his sparkling blue eyes smiling victoriously as the competition was reduced to stammering and open-mouthed, revolted admiration.

Gary was also a bar fly. He had been divorced shortly after the bending roll accident, and had taken to closing bars every night and chasing women and sleeping in his pickup truck. He was homeless, not out of necessity, but rather because he just didn’t have the motivation to find a place. It would have cut into his carousing too much. But the truck was a bit cramped. One day, the Texans were sitting around at lunch, talking about Texas, and guns, and what not, and Gary said, “How much you want for that crab-infested, diseased excuse for a canopy on the back of your truck?”

His friend studied him for a little while, picturing Gary living in the camper shell through the long wet Washington winter.

“It’s falling apart.” he answered.

“I know, so how much you want for it?” Gary shot back.

His friend thought about it for a little while longer. It really was falling apart. It didn’t leak, but it was real sloppy in all its joints and seams, and probably would leak soon.

“How ‘bout if you give me that little Peacemaker for it?” he finally offered. He thought Gary would balk at the thought of trading for the pistol. His father had given it to him for Christmas a couple of years before, and it was a treasure to him.

“I’ll bring the puss-licking slut in tomorrow.” he said without hesitation. “It’s a sweet little piece. You won’t be sorry.”

So they traded the dilapidated canopy for the classic western revolver in the parking lot the next day, and for several weeks, Gary had a home on wheels. Then one day they were sitting out in the parking lot on their break and his friend noticed that the canopy was gone from the back of the truck. He knew Gary had no place to store it, so he asked, “Where’s the canopy, Gary?”

Gary looked sheepish and didn’t want to say. He shuffled around as his friend pressed him for an answer. Finally he gave in, but did not swear at first, and then only halfheartedly. “I forgot to bolt it to my truck.”

You didn’t bolt it down?”

“No, I didn’t bolt it down. I was just cruising down the road the other day and I went around this big-assed hairy curve and the bony-assed sorry bitch flipped off in the ditch. It was gone— splinters and shit—nothing worth trying to pick up, so I left it there by the fucking road.”

His friend looked at him incredulously, starting to feel angry and sorry for Gary for being such a half-wit. “What were you thinking!”

Gary had nothing else to say. He was broken and hurt by his own foolishness. He was a little frightened with how out of control and on the edge his existence had become as his marriage had come unraveled, but he could not talk about it. He didn’t understand the hard feelings of heartbreak, and scarcely allowed himself to feel them. He would never ever talk about it. Like so many men, he had no tools with which to understand or take advantage of his struggle in order to propel his personal growth.

They finished the break, and Gary went on living in the cab of his truck for several months longer until his frazzled, broken, lonely heart began to settle and some semblance of sanity and stability started to show up in his ragged cowboy jeans. Eventually, he was a little less crazy and a little more focused, and a little less dangerous to himself. But he was always a bright-eyed charmer who hid behind his wild, putrid gift for making even the woolliest bad- ass boys feel like they needed to go take a shower after talking to him. Gary was one of a kind—yet kindred in spirit to so many hurting, debilitated men in the throes of divorce.

Twenty-two years later, and twenty years after he lost track of Gary, he found himself in a similar struggle for his own sanity, safety, and peace of mind. For the first time, as he thought about the wild, charming Texas boy, he understood the lostness and pain and vulnerability that Gary had floundered in. He had always known that Gary’s wild, reckless, craziness was related to his personal problems, but it was all understanding without empathy until now. But things had changed. He was keeping his exterior life intact much better than Gary had for the most part, but the turbulence and restless distraction within him seemed just like what Gary had been through so many years ago. A certain degree of craziness seemed to go with the territory of divorce and there was just a little comfort in this. He would give it time, and maybe go just a little easier on himself.

man of war

Sacred soldier, 

Dark destroyer, 

Avenger of sorrows. 

Manchild— frightened, faithful, strong, and true. 

Life’s blood, his currency. 

Life’s blood—his own if need be! 

Down to the valley, 

With brothers in arms, 

The conflict fierce and raging, 

All in smoke and thunder 

And terror and screams of the damned, 

The holy, hallowed, hollowed lost. 

What sacred hopeless folly, this children’s crusade! 

What bitter treachery, moonrise over hell, 

Brother against brother, 

In service to the gods. 

He had always known that there was something powerful and holy in the bond and love of brothers in arms. It was neither noble nor base, but profoundly sacred and mysterious. It was the root of the heart laid bare and naked before comrades. No pretense, no bravado, no clever devices. It was total dependence on men who held your life in their hands and utterly depended on you for the preservation of their own. It was the brotherhood of those who have laid down their lives and walked side by side into hell, their only hope resting in each other. It was the haunting hollow comfort of shared horror—of secrets too brutal, too dark, too painful to speak, or ever to reveal to the uninitiated. It was the haunting emptiness of death shared between those who slipped lost and alone beneath its shimmering blackness and those who held them in their arms as the last fading light ebbed away, only to carry their death with them long and unmercifully to elderly graves.

He had known countless Viet Nam Vets over the years. Each seemed to have a strategy all his own for carrying the sacred burden of his membership in this tragic thing. Some managed better than others. Some did not manage at all. But none would speak of it freely. He understood this. They were the sacrifice laid down before the gods of war. They were the unclean thing—anathema to a self righteous culture that had no sense of its own unclean heart. They were scapegoats for the unexamined darkness of our own black shadows. They dared not share their hell with us. Neither we nor they could hope to bear it. All of us were far too insecure, much too fragile, hopelessly unconscious.

Brothers in arms found no rest. No one could or would comfort their crushing sorrows and tortured hearts. And so, they have carried on, shrouded in secrecy—silent in condemnation, forbidden and unclean, but by no means profane—holy dogs of war, the sacred hounds of hell, set loose among us to torment our complacency and to mark the way of shadows for those of us brave enough and strong enough to venture to the edges of our own moonless black night.

the nuns

Strawberry Point was a wonderful place to be a kid. The tiny peninsula had a great view of Mount Tamalpais, which had taken the silhouette of the love-sick Indian maiden who had leapt to her death there long ago, and of Sausalito, with its houseboats and quaint beatnik mystique to the southwest across the water. Ferries floated out to the south from Sausalito toward the San Francisco skyline. Alcatraz was out there, and he often wondered if any of the dangerous criminals who had unsuccessfully tried to swim to their escape had been eaten by sharks off the shore of his little peninsula. Further off he could see the Oakland Bay Bridge leapfrogging over Yerba Buena Island. And around on the back side of the point, just a big league stone’s throw across Richardson Bay, were more houseboats at Tiburon and more ferries levitating across the hazy expanse toward the City.

It was 1959 and he was eight years old. His family lived in student housing at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. The Southern Baptist school had bought several hundred acres on Strawberry Point that had previously been a game reserve. There were open rolling hills and huge stands of pine and eucalyptus and marshlands and gravel beaches. There were red foxes and deer and cranes and herons and redwing blackbirds and skunks and bluebelly lizards and cottontail bunnies and garter snakes and raccoons. When he was not in school, the Point belonged to him. His parents were consumed with work and study, and he was too young to be responsible for his little brother and sister, so he was free to roam. Often he hunted for snakes or lizards in the woods, or for sand crabs under rocks along the beach, overturning stones to see what he would find underneath. As often as not there would be one or more of the little crabs hiding there. They ranged from the size of a BB up to about three inches across, and he often came home with dozens of them in a bucket. He was allowed to keep them overnight in an aquarium with gravel and a little sea water, but then he must return them to the bay.

Once his father had put his feet up on the coffee table and tipped the aquarium over onto the floor. It was a great adventure! The whole family scrambled and hunted for the scurrying little crabs for the rest of the evening. There were several dozen of them, and they rapidly scampered for cover in every corner and under every object in the little apartment.

Strawberry Point School was about a mile up East Strawberry Drive from the east entrance to the seminary on the Tiburon side of the point. He rode the bus to school most mornings, waiting at the bus stop and doing his best not to be mortally wounded in the perpetual rock fight that preoccupied the half hour before the bus arrived.

In the afternoon, he only rode the bus when the weather was disagreeable. He much preferred to walk up the road between the tall shaggy eucalyptus trees, sometimes taking a shortcut over the hill behind old man Mason’s place. There was adventure in this, because old man Mason was the head grounds keeper for the seminary, and it was he who usually interfered with the mighty deeds of valor that young boys embark upon in such a pristine wilderness as a seminary campus. He was the closest thing they had to an enemy. All the other adults were engrossed in studies and rarely were seen in broad daylight except when rushing from the housing complex across campus to classes. In reality, Mason was not particularly concerned with the kids on campus, and rarely interfered with them, but he was legendary—the campus ogre—and to cut through his back yard was an extraordinary feat of bravery, and worth all the adrenaline his glands could produce. Usually he was not all that brave. It took an encounter with the nuns to push him to such extreme measures.

The road to school was also the address of a huge old boarding house that was home to a large contingent of Catholic nuns. It was years later when he learned that the place was a retreat center where nuns came to rest and replenish their strength. As a child, he had no idea what went on in the nunnery, and the place filled his little unexamined Baptist heart with fear and suspicion. He had never been around Catholics before. The heartland of the Texas panhandle was home to his family for generations, and Catholics were few and far between in the little farm towns where he had lived. His parents had ventured out from the Texas high plains a couple of years before seminary to live in south western Washington, but even the northwest lumber town of Longview had not exposed him to nuns.

Now he found himself sharing the road home from school with nuns on a regular basis. The eucalyptus trees that lined the road were enormous, with trunks exceeding three or four feet across. They reached up to join hands 70 feet or more above the road, forming a dark, cool tunnel that rustled and creaked and permeated the air with mystery and pungent invisible vapors and secrets. The sounds of traffic and city life were swallowed up within this passage, and it held its space in a timeless secret stillness that was rarely interrupted except by its own rustling and the barking of squirrels and the still small sound of an occasional seed pod falling onto the pavement. The nuns made no sound at all when they walked along the road, unless they spoke pleasantly to him in passing. But he was careful not to allow this to happen.

As he walked up the road toward home, he was ever watchful for nuns. If he spotted any of them in the road ahead of him, he would climb the hill and risk capture by old man Mason. If he turned and saw nuns coming along the road behind him, he would quicken his pace to get past the nunnery before they caught up with him. On nice days, it seemed that there were always nuns lurking somewhere along the road.

One of the most remarkable things about the nuns was that they were so stealthy and swift and seemed able to materialize out of thin air. Countless times he had suddenly and unexpectedly found a pair of silent nuns swishing past him in their black robes and speaking softly and kindly to him as they passed, regardless of his most diligent efforts to watch his back as he made his way along the road. Their ability to appear right behind him in the road was uncanny, and absolutely terrifying.

The following year was election year. Shortly after his ninth birthday, Eisenhower’s term as president expired. He had never known any other president, being an infant at the beginning of the Eisenhower years. The election was the talk of all the campus kids. None of them had ever known another president either. Most everyone was intensely concerned with the outcome, and uniformly pro-Nixon. On the other hand, his teachers, and most of the kids from the community outside the campus favored Kennedy.

On the night of the election, everyone suspended their studies to focus on election coverage. His family did not have a television, so they sat around the radio until late that night.

“Why don’t we want Kennedy to win?,” he asked his mom as she finally tucked him in an hour or so after his regular bed time.

“Well, the problem with Kennedy,” She explained thoughtfully, “is that he’s a Catholic. And Catholics answer to the Pope. The Pope is the head of the Catholic church, and whatever he says, they have to follow.”

He lay there in the dim light filtering in from the hallway, the muffled sounds of election coverage in the background. She continued.

“We’ve never had a president before who was a Catholic, and many people are concerned about what a Catholic president would do if the Pope asked him to make a decision that was not good for our country. The Pope is not an American.”

The gravity of this situation slowly sank in.

“Can I stay up and listen to the radio?” he asked, now seeing just how serious the Kennedy threat really was. Now he had good reason to fear the nuns, and the Kennedys, and the Pope.

“No, dear. We’ll let you know how it came out when you wake up in the morning.”

He lay very still after she left the room, hoping to stay awake, and to hear enough detail to follow the fate of the nation as it unfolded on the radio. But all was in vain. Long before the night ended, he was deep in sleep, and America had fallen into the grasp of the nuns and their Italian Pope.

maker's song

Night still, 

Warm glimmer of moon, 

Green leaf, 

Inked black in shadow. 

Her heart pounds, 

Quick breath drawn short, 

Held long. 

Night still, 

Warm glimmer of moon, 

Green leaf 

Trembles in dark shadow. 

His heart pounds, 

Veins beat cadence to 

The maker’s song. 

For a month now, he had been alone. It had been a tumultuous moon cycle of troubled feelings and anxious fears and surprising quiet and stirring inspiration. He had not entirely sorted out this business of being whole. He didn’t have a clear sense of what role another person could safely play in his life. He didn’t really know for sure where to stand in his own space, much less how to let another stand beside him. He had been addicted to the pursuit of intimacy for his whole life. Withdrawal had been cold and hard and wrenching, but felt clean and healthy.

As this first month drew to a close, he began to settle into the exploration of his own creativity. He began to have a more settled sense of his belonging and presence and place in the expanse of creation. Spring had not officially arrived, but the weather had turned already, and rebirth and joy were everywhere around him. He bought some fancy daffodils, and puttered in the yard. He began to turn his attention toward his art and his bees, and found a base of peace and power and contentment that was grounded and secure as it had not been before.

His own place in the expanse of creation—what a mystery this was. He was a maker—one who is not content to merely pass through this world, but must participate in its ongoing making and unmaking and remaking in order to be whole. He had known for most of his life that he was a maker, although he had not always had words or awareness of what that meant. Now it was at the precipice of his understanding, stretching, trying out unproven wings.

He had spent nearly two years in the throes of spiritual awakening, his head spinning at the pace at which insight and transformation had propelled him along. He had not known from day to day where his journey would take him, and he had entrusted himself precariously to his own emerging heart. His journey had uncovered monsters and terrors, and his heart had engaged each one, not taming them, but learning their place and their gifts. Now, it seemed that the journey would take a new turn—the maker was ready to stand up and get to work.

With this new sense of purpose and identity came a calm assurance about relationships and intimacy. He could scarcely understand the way that he had been bound and compelled by his need for intimate relationship all his life. It seemed so foreign and strange now. He still looked forward to the blossoming of a good and whole relationship, but it was no longer his grail-quest. It would take its course in due time.

the daffodil curse

Daffodil cream pie. 

Imagine that! 

Daffodil cream pie. 

Long for it. 

Sing of it. 

Eat it. 

The trap is sprung! 

Daffodil scream die. 

Imagine that. 

In a flowerbed beside his driveway, there stood a beautiful clump of daffodils. He had inherited them when his wife moved out during the divorce. She had planted them years before. Faithfully every February, they pushed up out of the ground and nodded their heads in favor of the new Spring. They were a mixture of singles and fancy doubles with a few jonquils in the clump to add a little drama. In their season, the daffodils stood nearly two feet tall. The clump was about that wide as well, and probably was due to be thinned and divided after this season. The blooms came on strong, and close to a dozen at a time.
Being the sole guardian and keeper of the daffodils now, he had found that they made wonderful bouquets to take to his girl. She loved them and appreciated him all the more because they were from his own yard. But then, suddenly and mysteriously, she had turned her affections away from him and there was no one to give the daffodils to. Stories have been told already about the devastation and trauma he experienced over the loss of her company and intimate conversation. But in the telling, the daffodils were at first overlooked. Now daffodils are hard to overlook for long, and these daffodils were engaged in a drama all their own.

During the first week after she left him, he could hardly bear to look at the clump of daffodils. He had picked all that were open or nearly so a few days before, and left them on her kitchen counter with a Hallmark card for her to find upon her return from work that evening. Now, a fresh set of buds were plump and ready to open. Whenever he saw them, a wave of bitter grief overtook him and he cursed them and spoke his heart to them as if they were responsible for this horrid tragedy. But gradually, he regained the composure of his heart and mind, and found a safe place to hold his sorrow. He had stopped looking at the clump of daffodils altogether.

Then one day, after more than two weeks had passed, he looked at the daffodil clump, and noticed that something was not right. The leaves and flower stalks were vigorous and vibrant and strong. Exactly a dozen buds remained on the stalks. But all of them were withered and shriveled. Not a single one had opened. As he looked carefully, he realized that these were the same buds that had looked so plump and full of life two weeks before. No daffodil had opened and reached maturity in the entire clump since he had cursed them so vehemently for their role in his heartbreak. In disbelief, he glanced around his and his neighbors’ front yards, and all the other daffodils were doing fine. They continued to bud and bloom vigorously. Another clump less than ten feet away was doing exceptionally well. He was dumbstruck! He had cursed the very life force of these delightful beauties in his careless agony.

How could he possibly have had such an impact? He was a modern man. There was surely some rational horticultural explanation for what had happened to the daffodils. But slowly, he realized that it didn’t matter whether or not science could answer the mystery. The daffodils were a parable. He had cursed the daffodils, and they had withered. During the days when he had those bitter, fateful encounters with the daffodils, he had been utterly vulnerable. His core was exposed, and his energy was intense and powerful. He had recognized this at the time. It had seemed that he was a volcano in full eruption, and he had been in awe of what was happening to him. Now he saw the potential of such deep openness and vulnerability to affect his world. Now he realized how gravely serious it is to vent such energy upon others, even upon simple beings such as the daffodils. And now, he was changed once again.

A deep reverence and awe crept over him as he slowly understood the meaning of what had happened. He had never grasped the wonder of his presence in the world. He had never felt the importance of being present to creation with compassion and sensitive care. He had not understood his own potential for blessing and cursing at such a vital level. His upbringing and experience had not taught him these things, even though the theology and philosophy of it had been encapsulated there. He had simply not seen anything, nor experienced any depth, that could reveal this to him.

The daffodils had been messengers—angels from a deeper layer of integrity in the fabric of being. They had spoken to him of love. They had shuddered with his pain and lost their own glory and joy. He hoped that he had done them no permanent harm. He blessed them now, and prayed that they would rise up in their glory next Spring.

the chasm

I wish that I could fall back into the womb. 

Simple peace and contentment without care. 

Ignorant bliss and quiet comfort 

Before birth's rude insurrection! 

And then, danger and fear and deep longing, 

Gentle nurture and safety and care 

But not enough to protect 

From monsters feeding on a fresh new heart. 

I wish that I could fall back into the tomb. 

Pain and sorrow lay dormant there 

And could not touch me 

Before the resurrection. 

But now, expansive and raw and electric, 

All new and sensitive and so very hard 

With edges sharp and unyielding, 

What is my life? 

It had been a week since their whirlwind romance had ended abruptly, and for him, without warning. He had experienced so much in the intervening week that he could scarcely conceive of it all. The flood of emotion had overwhelmed him thoroughly, and he had yielded himself completely to it. He was exhausted now, and eager to get on with living and hopefully moving closer to his true center than he had been in times past.

He had given himself up to the emotional torrent of the past week because he knew that it represented a distillation and culmination of many things that had been working in his heart for a very long time. He knew that not all that he was experiencing was simply about the loss of this wonderful, beautiful woman who complemented him so delightfully. He knew that it was that loss compounded and interwoven with a lifetime of loss and wounding and fear and anger that he had never been able to express adequately or experience freely until now.

Now he was exhausted, and needed desperately to rest. He would give anything to let the emotions go and just move in the clarity of his mind and the simplicity of plans and activities and tasks. But he knew that this would not happen instantaneously or easily. He knew there would be ebb and flow to the process. He knew that he would have many more bouts of turmoil and sorrow over this thing, and that layers from his past were now exposed and raw and waiting for more work to be done. He wanted rest, but he was reluctant to shy away from the exposure and vulnerability he had so newly discovered for fear that he might lose it. His transformation was so bittersweet right now—so dangerous and painful and uncertain, and yet so promising—so exhausting and hard, and yet so rich and full.

He had no way to know what lay ahead. Would the next turn bring relief? Greater sorrow? Fuller expressions of rage and anger? A deeper encounter with the darkest fears of his deep soul? Eternal joy and contentment? Or perhaps some mysterious blending of all of these things?

He felt as though all the hardship and misery and turmoil of the past eight years—no, of his entire life—had converged upon the past week. Now he was in a unique position to shift his heart, his patterns of behavior and thinking, his expectations for himself and others, his very core. This shift had energy and direction all its own, apart from his conscious intentions, and would have its way with him. He was excited and hopeful. This lost love had opened up a crevasse that ran straight to the center of his being. Now there was movement and shifting and upheaval like he had never before experienced. All the remarkable and transforming experiences of which he had written over the past year and a half had been preparations for this moment. Now he stood on the edge of this great chasm that had opened up into the interior of his soul, and without hesitation, he dove headlong into the great expanse of it.

the beast

The dream was intense. Whenever he thought about it, his skin crawled and he shuddered with deep icy chills of dread. He had dreamed the dream months ago, and had not thought of it again until today, when he realized that he had felt the full force of its monster’s fury earlier in the week.

The dream was set in a long, wide corridor. The corridor was full of people, and there was a wide double door at the end of it. The people were milling about aimlessly until suddenly the doors opened and a frantic crowd pressed into the corridor from the other side. They were panicked about something and trying desperately to get away from whatever it was. The panic instantly spread to the people already in the corridor, and everyone was scrambling to escape into some other undefined space away from the doors. almost everyone managed to get out of the corridor, except one person who fell and was injured in the stampede to escape. Another person tried to help him up, but the threat from beyond the door was pressing closer and he finally gave up his efforts to save his friend and fled away. The injured person lay perfectly still on the floor of the corridor in hope not to be noticed by the thing when it arrived. He had no other choice or hope since he could not get away and there was no better way to hide.

Suddenly, a dark monster burst into the corridor from behind the doors. It was black and opaque and seemed to absorb any light that shown on it, not reflecting from its surface at all. It had the rough shape of a man, with crude, incompletely formed features. It had mitten hands and feet, and its head was a stubby lump protruding from its shoulders.It had no facial features except dimly glowing red eyes. It burst into the corridor, obviously engrossed in seeking out prey to attack. It was energetic and furious, and frustrated that all the potential victims had disappeared from the corridor. It lumbered along the corridor, and nearly missed seeing the injured person on the floor. As it passed him by, it paused to notice him.

Then suddenly, it reached down and swiped at its victim with the fury of its black dark rage. In that one swift movement the victim was picked from the ground and slammed against the wall with such force that his silhouette was impressed deeply into the wall. The victim was utterly traumatized, but still alive and not physically injured. He slowly slid down out of the human-shaped impression he had left in the wall, and lay crumpled on the floor as the monster went on to seek out his next victim. There would be a next victim.

Now, months after he had forgotten the dream, it was alive and dreadful. The dark beast seemed to be a premonition of the onslaught he was enduring. He felt as though he had been slammed so hard into the wall by the loss of love that he must surely have left his impression there. He knew that his own dark fear of abandonment, and a deep unspoken rage were at the core of his heartbreak, and he knew that the monster had come to claim him now.

Having seen the beast, having felt its fury full force, he knew that it was him. He also knew that he had kept it locked away and was now finally confronting it head on. He had felt the fear and dread of it, but had not allowed its wrath to boil to the surface. He knew it was coming soon.

Friday morning began easily. The tide of tumultuous emotions was in ebb, and he decided to make a brief appearance at work. He got into the shower to freshen up and make himself presentable to appear in public. As he stood in the hot stream of water, a small current of anger began to surge up. It was undirected. It had no target or objective other than to be released. It was small at first, and he welcomed it, knowing that anger was the emotion he suppressed and feared most. As he gave this anger space to work, it grew. Soon, it was boiling, and still grew.

He stood with his back to the water as rage overtook him. He began to be frightened of the intensity of this thing that continued to surge and build to levels he had never known. His upper body and arms and neck and face took on an intensity of energy and pressure that caused him to literally fear that he might explode. He resisted the temptation to try to shut this thing down. He had longed for the freedom to tap into his anger for many years, and had never successfully done so at a deep level. Here it was, the beast he dreaded most, and he lived to tell of it.

alone at last

As Wednesday wore long, he began to realize that the intensity and fury of his pain was bigger than the relationship that was ending. He had spent his entire life in dread of and aversion to being alone. He had always pursued love to hide from loneliness. Ironically, he had endured a hell of isolation for the last seven years of his marriage in sheer terror of being alone. He had always believed that he must engage Herculean strength to avoid loneliness at any cost. Now, for the first time, he saw that he did not know what love was. All he knew was the sense of relief and comfort he felt when a relationship was present to shield him from loneliness. All the warmth and tenderness and care he brought to a relationship were driven to this end.

He could not envision being without an intimate partner and happy at the same time. The two things seemed mutually exclusive, and in fact, always had been in his experience. He now saw that he had a gaping void in his heart, and that he had always relied on his partner to fill it in. He knew that somehow, he must heal and restore this damage in order to realize wholeness and love. Otherwise, he would continue to smother and engulf new partners with his need. He felt remorse and sorrow now for the relationships of his life, each of which had eventually succumbed to the inevitable collapse.

So now he turned to look within his heart. What was this horror of being alone? How deep did it go? Where were its roots? What must be done to heal it? Would the resulting wholeness be good enough? Could he trust it? As he pondered all these questions, he realized that he harbored a deep black fear that he could not at first articulate. He realized that this fear had pushed up and driven all the intensity of his turmoil since Sunday, but that he still had not faced it head-on. As he began to see this, his skin tingled and he grew cold. He was beginning to understand the place of physical sensations in deep emotional release, and so he accepted these sensations as markers for the movement of this deep dread closer to the surface of his feeling. He knew that it was the key to his loneliness, and he knew that it ran as deep and as far back as his life on Earth. Having tapped its energy this week, he knew that it was accessible. He knew that the door had opened, and that he dared not close it until the dark thing had been met face to face.

Thursday was a day of relative calm and reflection. The waves of emotion were smaller and further apart. He was now focused on his black, unspoken fear, and its connection to his current lost love. As the day passed, he began to see it clearly, and to understand why this loss was so devastating.

He had not worked for this relationship. It had come full blown with their first meeting. For the first time in his life, he was loved simply and clearly and without reservation or stipulation, and without any effort on his part to draw the love to him. He had trusted this love to be true, and knew even now, in the wreckage of its fulfillment, that it was. He had opened himself fully to it and laid down all of his defenses. And so, when she had made her fateful and inevitable decision to protect her heart from engulfment, he was hit full force with all the intensity and horror of his deepest fear—that he could never be loved freely and fully and without strings or controls. He had never challenged this fear before. He had always kept up his defenses. He had never entrusted himself to anyone, but had rather pressed for companionship as a close substitute.

Now he was alone at last with his loneliness. Now he was faced with the possibility that unconditional and nurturing love was not possible to sustain—that to be loved, he must scrap and fight to be worthy and to draw it to him, and that collapse was inevitable in any case. The collapse of this precious love had shaken his hope to its very core. It might very well be that the desire of his heart simply did not exist. This was the dark fear that had pressed up from his deepest being—that he was doomed to hunger and strive forever for a love that was impossible to sustain.

Now he had seen the black fear, and had given it a name. But he was certain that he had not slain it nor tamed it. He knew that he had just begun to meet this fear. He knew there was still work to come, and he didn’t know how to proceed. More importantly, he didn’t know the answer to the questions the fear raised. What is love? Can it be sustained freely and openly and honestly? Was he capable of it? Would anyone ever be fully present to him to give and receive it freely? He simply did not know. He was hopeful but unsure, shaken in his current experience.

As he pondered all of this, he began to sense a shift. He had always been urgent to fill his experience with intimate companionship. Even as he had seen this relationship crumbling around him he had desperately grasped at the possibilities for finding something to replace it soon. He simply could not bear the loneliness. But now, a change was happening. He did not feel loneliness. He was repulsed by the urgency he had always felt in the past. He must not engage anyone in intimate companionship until he had wrestled through his great dark fear. He felt a new peace and strength to go on—to wrestle the monster alone—to learn his place in the world—to be free. If the outcome of this shift eventually blossomed in love and intimacy with another, so be it. But he would not rush about seeking the numbing drug of intimate companionship in the mean time. He had a mission—a calling—he would be clear and strong and free.

the hurricane

Words lunged with fangs and claws! 

Pain turned on its heel and struck back, 

Crashing through fragile tenderness 

Already broken. 

Shards lay sharp and treacherous, 

Scattered across the floor 

Where tender hearts had once embraced, 

Not foreseeing catastrophe. 

The drive home from Visalia revealed no great insights. It went on far too long. He had formed a vision in his mind and heart for how to proceed with his love and his beloved. He just wanted to be home and to wait for her call. The road stood in his way, and he sped along, pushing the car, pushing the miles, pushing the law.

But as he pressed on, the road spoke to him with one small question. What if she did not want to be with him? That was the one possibility that his plan could not answer. He could boil oceans and move continents, but none of that would matter if she did not want him. This nagging question was clear and quiet in the back of his mind, and would not leave him alone. It crept into his hope and made him crazy with frustration and urgency to get home and talk to her. He had to know.

Finally, the drive was done. He checked the phone for messages and left a message for her that he had arrived and would like to talk as soon as she was ready. Then he got in the shower to freshen up in anticipation that he might see her today. After the shower, he checked e-mail on his computer, and there was her note.

It was a long note, and had been difficult for her to write. He knew this before he read the first word. As he began to read, he braced his heart for the worst, and it came. She had learned much about herself in the past year, and had begun to take good care of herself, learning how to be alone and comfortable with it for the first time ever. Then she had met him and he had utterly swept her off her feet. The whirlwind romance had been wonderful and powerful and idealistic beyond her dreams. But as time passed, she had begun to be swallowed up in it. She had begun to be smothered under the onslaught of his affection and nurture and care. She began to feel that her newfound self would be lost in him, and that was not a price she could pay. She had begun to relish the times when he was gone, and to arrange ways and reasons to be apart. Finally, as the opportunity to move to Colorado materialized, she made the choice to leave him to protect the precious self she had found.

As he read her letter, he grew numb. Here was the only attack against which he could not defend their love. He stood up and wandered aimlessly around the house for a few minutes, blank disbelief and horror mingled and tearing at his heart. Then, in a rush like none he had ever experienced in his entire life, grief and sorrow and loneliness and pain and rage rushed up and swept over him. He let it come unhindered, giving his voice and his lungs and every ounce of his being to it. For the rest of the day, the force of it was unabated. He had moments of relative calm, but the intensity of the waves of emotion that he was experiencing was so great that his arms and legs grew numb and cold as his energy was channelled so furiously away from his extremities and into this hurricane.

Whenever it seemed that he must stop to rest, another memory would well up and take him on to the next tidal wave of despair or pain or anger or compassion. Eventually he was able to call a trusted friend who knew his heart well. She came and spent the rest of the day with him, hearing his story, holding space around him for his broken heart to flounder in safely, and reassuring him that his body and heart would not be undone by the wrenching intensity of what he must endure.

He was exhausted from the ravages of finding himself deeply and utterly alone, and for the first time in two nights, he slept deeply. With morning came a relative calm. The storm of emotions was by no means over, but the fury of it was a little less intense. Now he could reflect a little in the moments between the waves. Now he could begin to examine what he was experiencing, and fill in a little with understanding.

He went to the Gavilan Cafe, and told Sandy and Mary Ann about the loss of his sweetheart, whom both had met, and they read his heartache and cared for him as well as they could over his breakfast. It was good to eat, and he was sure it would help to restore some of the weight he had lost since Sunday. Now it was Wednesday and he had only eaten twice. He went from the cafe to look at his bees, but the rain came hard and cold, and he could not open hives.

The day wore on into restlessness and urgency to find relief. Nothing helped. Distractions were only reminders, and activities were powerless to relieve. Loneliness and loss were his companions. They fed on everything he did. They walked in all his shadows. And even in the moments when a distraction seemed promising, he would turn away from it, knowing deeply that nothing must be allowed to interfere with his quest to heal this thing. He must continue on and face every moment as it came.

hope

On Sunday evening he had planned to go to see her. She called instead, and told him that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had opened up for her to move back to Colorado and take the dream job she had always wanted. It would put her close to her kids, and get her out of the hard, dangerous business of horse training. She would take Reggie, her Arabian, with her. He couldn’t bring himself to grasp the impact of her words at first.

She had come to California to follow her dream three years ago, and to find year-round good weather to train horses. She had found good weather, and fragments of the dream, but she had unexpectedly found him too. In seven short weeks, they had explored a continent of joys and treasures together. He had opened up a world of love and tenderness and acceptance and passion for her that she had never known, and his attention and care had awakened the strength to choose this move. It was the first thing she had ever done entirely for herself. She had never believed in herself enough before. But he had believed in her with such energy and passion that she had found strength and clarity to choose herself and her life, in fact, her survival, for the first time ever. Ironically, the choice must separate them.

Now she was leaving, and could see no way to keep their relationship moving forward. She had agonized for over a week before she spoke to him, trying to come up with a solution. He could not leave his kids, with three years of high school left between them, and she must not pass this opportunity by. All she could see to do was to carefully pack their tender sweet love in a safe secret place and carry it with her. She must let him go. He must let her go.

As her words began to sink in, he was overwhelmed with grief and rage and deep longing. Now, for the third time, he had loved, and for the third time, his beloved had chosen a path away from him. She seemed utterly resolved to the path she must follow, and she had somehow decided that she could encapsulate the past seven weeks in a memory that would fulfill her need for love forever.

She spoke of this to him now:

“What we have together is perfect. It will always be there in our hearts, wherever we go, whatever we do. Nothing can change that or take it away. I will always love you, and will keep you with me. But I have to seal this off and hide it away to find the strength to go and do what is in my heart.”

He could not bring himself to accept the idea that they must sever their ongoing relationship to preserve their hearts and their love across the miles. They talked for hours that night, and wept into their phones, and argued and questioned and agonized still. Eventually, their hearts were weary and their words were exhausted, and they resolved to take a couple of days apart to let their minds and hearts settle around the implications and possibilities. She had entered the conversation with the resolve that no options were possible—that she must ride Reggie off into the sunset with her remembered love, never to open her heart to new love again. He had bucked hard against that notion and without knowing exactly how, was equally resolved to find a way, yet overwhelmed with a sense of doom and dread, knowing that she too must share his determination if it were to succeed.

He did not sleep that night, and was overwhelmed with waves of grief and anger. He wrote her a long e-mail note expressing his heart and his hope and his frustration. He told her what she meant to him and how he had begun to sense her troubled heart during the previous week. He told her that he could not bring himself to give up on their future. He told her how important hope had always been to him, and how it would not let him settle for a wonderful past, however good it had been.

He sent the note early Monday morning, and called his sister. She had been a trusted and valuable friend to him through all the trials and difficulties and transformations of the past few years, and she would help him clear his mind and heart. She invited him to come to see her in Visalia for a day or two. It was only a couple or three hours drive from Gilroy, and he knew it would help. He made a few phone calls to clear his schedule, threw a few things into a bag, and drove off to seek his path.

As always, driving cleared his head and settled his thoughts. He was a captive to the miles and the destination, and could do nothing but drive and think and feel. Parts of his brain that were dormant at other times seemed to awaken and surge into action whenever he drove. He could find no music in his collection that suited his mood, so he made the drive mostly in silence, trusting the rhyme of the road to settle his heart. It was the stuff that insight was made of. Driving was a treasured secret in the transforming of his life, and he knew that by the time he arrived in Visalia, something would come clear for him, and it did.

For seven years, he had held onto a poorly founded hope that his endurance and persistence could restore his marriage. He had weathered the raging storms, the lonely heartbreak, the hiding and lying to hold onto the pretense of the marriage, for the sake of the kids and for the hope itself. He had hoped without a shred of evidence that his hope could be fulfilled. He had loved and held on in the face of persistent unabated discouragement until finally he had laid the hope down to move on into honesty and wholeness.

For yet another year, he had held on to a passionate hope that his friendship with the moon’s little sister would blossom into romance. It didn’t, and her persistent, consistent determination to stay friends and be present with him had finally settled that hope and let him go.

In both of these cases, the foundation of his hope had been flawed and rooted in a love that was not shared. But now, he found hope springing up from a clear base of love shared. He was sure of her love. He was clear about her desire to have him in her heart, and her resolve to keep him there in spite of their impending separation. If a hope with no solid foundation had given him the strength to endure the hell of isolation and loneliness in his broken marriage for seven years, what could his hope endure now, with love shared and burning bright. Suddenly it was clear to him that he must fight for this love. He had felt that he was helpless to stop its crash against the inevitability of giving his beloved free rein to follow her calling. He had felt helpless to sustain love’s progress because she had seen her move, and her resignation as such an insurmountable and inevitable thing. She had seen the only possibility in treasuring their past and blocking out hope of a future for their love except in memory.

But she had not known him long enough to really know the fierce intensity and dogged determination that fueled hope in his heart. She had not seen the years of hopeless hope he had endured before. She had no way to know in these seven short weeks, how persistent and intense his loyalty and determination and commitment in hope had always been. She had no way to know how much more fuel their love had fed to his hope than his past loves had been able to. But he knew. He was intimately familiar with hope. He knew what force and energy it could propel with such a love at its core. He would not give up. He would fight for a love like this until his dying breath.

Now it became clear to him that this hope was different from the others. Before, he had loved and hoped doggedly for one who had not shared his love. Now, she was fully present in that love, and even though she could see no way to go on, he had reason and passion and clarity to push forward and drive his hope to reality. He would instill that hope in her as well. He would teach her to use her hope to push on and to achieve all of her dreams rather than pruning and trimming them to achieve only the most urgent parts. He would never let her give up this part of her dream any more than he could deny her the dream that was taking her away.

They would find a way to love across the miles. In time, they would find a way to reunite.

This clarity and insight and passion grew and solidified and gained legs to run. By the next morning, he had talked it through with his sister and worked it through in his heart, and there was nothing left to do but go back home and share it with the woman whom he loved. He did not yet know how the details of their ongoing relationship would play out. He did not know how she would respond to his new-found clarity and resolve. But he did know that he would not turn aside from loving her. He would not leave it locked in a box in his heart. He would love her fully and openly and actively to the ends of the earth. He would boil oceans. He would not give up.

And so, he packed his bag into the Honda and headed back home, eager to see what insights this drive would bring, and ready to face the challenges that lay ahead.

the tall people

Since the eighth grade, he had been on the shorter side of average. At five and a half feet, he was taller than some, but shorter than most of his male peers. As he grew older, he found that he was shorter than a growing number of women too. He had married a woman who was two inches taller than him. The moon’s sister was taller than him as well. Being mature and wise and very conscious of the immutable reality of his situation, he had never allowed himself to acknowledge just how much he wished he was taller, until one day the moon’s sister had pointed out to him that he was too short to be a good match for her romantically. It was a devastating blow. He had rallied his maturity and dignity against this simple, unavoidable fact all his life. But now it was out in the open—he was too short.

At some nearly conscious level, his shortness had always bothered him. He had known tall people who seemed to find their own sense of superiority in telling stories in which their tallness proved them better in one way or another than some hapless soul who, of course, was much shorter than them. These tall people seemed pathetic, and yet their stories secretly infuriated him, not just because they were so petty, but because in some dark corner of his heart, he believed them.

But when he met this woman, this earthy friend of horses, something changed. He was no longer short. He was perfect. He was taller than her by nearly six inches, and she never tired of marveling at what a “nice fit” he was for her. As weeks passed, he began to relax into the fit. He began to see himself differently. One day, he walked into a gas station to put money down to activate a pump. Standing in line in front of him was a man who was so tall that he nearly had to duck through the door of the gas station. As he stood beside the giant, he suddenly realized that he was not intimidated by his tallness. Standing next to this big guy, he felt entirely at ease. Tall was simply a novelty. As he became aware of this, he realized how very different it was from the way he had always felt before. Always, he had felt a twinge of inadequacy in the presence of tall people. He had never admitted it to himself, but it was true nonetheless. He had always imposed his standard of maturity on this irrational intimidation, shoving it back into some dark corner where it could not embarrass or harm. It was so unchangeable and childish. What good could come from dwelling on it? But now, the intimidation was gone. He was all right. This man’s tallness was not daunting at all.

As quickly as he recognized the shift in his perception toward his own height and the height of others, he also recognized the remarkable work that she had done in healing his heart of this thing. He was a good size—perfect for her—perfect for himself. For the first time in his life, he felt as though he was the right size. It was a revelation. It broke through distortions he had believed throughout his entire life. He was surprised at what a lightness this brought to him. Little had he understood the perverse weight of his unspoken obsession with height. It seemed silly to him now. Where had it come from? What had fed it? Why had he never seen through it before?

candlelight

In the distant dusky dim 

Of one bright strong candle 

Dancing from across the room, 

He looked into her face. 

Her delicate features varied 

With each blink 

and shift of his soft gaze. 

Now she was one, 

Now another, 

New with each moment, 

always and never changing. 

In the distant dusky dim 

Of one bright strong candle, 

Every woman was there, 

All of woman was there, 

And always, it was her 

—his muse. 

They had been close since they met, and quickly their comfortable, knowing familiarity grew into love. They had spent a month and a half exploring the intricacies and delicacies of the bond that had seemed to bloom full and ripe at their first meeting. That evening, as they sat and talked, it had seemed to both of them as though they had been friends and lovers for many years. It was like no experience either of them had ever had before, and it had launched a whirlwind romance that took them both, as well as all their friends, by surprise.

Now things began to calm a bit, everyone settling into the reality of this wonder of romance that had so unexpectedly sprung up full-blown and magical. It appeared to be much more than the whirlwind fling that some of their friends expected.

Tonight was a quiet night spent at home. He had cooked and rubbed her feet by the fire, and the evening had settled into dim light and soft words and quiet thoughts of pleasure and tenderness. He was very close to her now—a little too close for his middle-aged eyes to focus well, and the light was dim and soft and wavering. One candle flickered gently from across the room, and cast a remarkable mystery across her features. For a fleeting moment, he did not recognize her. Then the soft light shifted almost imperceptibly, and her features danced softly with it.

As he watched, she became and became and became again. For as long as he watched her there in the candlelight, her features seemed to shift and transform her being with the changing. He was in the presence of a most remarkable blessing. His muse was revealed plainly before his eyes. He had seen this vision several times before during the past month with her, but it had been transient and fleeting before—a mere flicker of the changeling panorama of feminine mystery and beauty that unfolded before him now.

the eunuch

For many years, his heart had burned with a seldom spoken and little understood rage. It had manifested itself over and over through the years in a disturbing and powerful image that dogged the idle moments and unguarded interludes in his artistic expression. The image appeared in sketches and drawings and clay and wax. Whenever he started to work without a predetermined goal in mind, which was often, it seemed that he always ended up staring back at a fresh new expression of the image before he was done.

The image of this dark mysterious fury was the face of a man. It was lean and angular, with an intense forward thrusting energy that burned with heat and rage and sheer force. He consciously knew very little about the man raging forth in the image except that he was the man himself. What fueled the rage, he did not know, but he did know that it was deep and massive and well insulated. It rarely surfaced overtly except in the various expressions of the image.

Finally one day, he was sitting quietly with no thought of the image, when its meaning boiled up to the surface and grabbed him with a shudder. The revelation was so rich and dark that it startled him and sent him reeling into a storm of powerful insights and emerging clarity that carried him through the night. The image was an unwilling eunuch.

For years, as his marriage had stagnated, he had come to view his role in it as that of a eunuch in service to the queen. There was no intimacy in it. She had made it clear that her wish was to maintain the hollow marital shell as a safe neutral haven for the kids to grow up within. He had been dubious about the potential of this hollow dead thing to nurture his children and to model wholeness and love in their lives, but had stayed in hope that a miracle would somehow revive the marriage.

His hope was futile and badly designed. Mixed with it, was a deep resentment of this all powerful woman who held him so firmly at arm’s length, neutered and hapless. The rage expressed itself in his art, and in his dreadful passive aggression. While his conscious heart chose to stay for noble reasons, the eunuch seethed and schemed and plotted his escape and the restoration of his life force.

Finally, as he began to move in widening cycles of transformation and healing, he had broken free of the grasp of the neutered marriage. In the process, he had met and fallen headlong in love with the moon’s sister. But she had no place in her heart to carry his romance, and no passion to return it in kind. She had kept him close and had explored his transformation with him as it unfolded, but she too had held him firmly at arm’s length. A eunuch still, his rage simmered just beneath the surface. He had escaped from service to the queen only to find her here once again, holding him off just as before.

Later, he met a powerful but gentle and perceptive earth woman. She was a keeper of horses and wise in the ways of animals, and closely tuned to the heart of the earth from which she came. She touched his heart deeply at their first encounter and healed something in it instantly. She knew him well, and loved him fully and without reservation. He too was clear in his understanding of the ways of her heart, and loved her straight through to the earth beneath her.

But there was a dark shadow that lingered around them and lurked, waiting for opportunities to burden their hearts with uneasiness. It was the eunuch. He had left two queens, and neither of them now held him in their service, but he was not free.

He was still a eunuch. He had not found his life force and in fact, still belonged to the queen, even though now she could not enter into his earth maiden to use her for her dark purposes. The earth woman was too clear in her love, expressing it without reserve, utterly free of the temptation to manipulate or control his heart.

And so, enraptured with his love for the earth woman, he was perplexed, not seeing nor understanding at first that the eunuch was still not free, but yet weighed down with the burden of his dry blank emptiness. But now, the realization had struck him full force, and he saw at last that he and his eunuch still answered to the now faceless queen. The queen must be dethroned. She must step down and take her place among the common citizens of his heart. She must yield her place to the earth maiden with her open heart and love unbounded.

He knew that the queen would not give him up easily. He knew that he would have to expose and depose her willfully. And first, he must find her strongholds within him and rout them out in strong daylight. He must root out the tentacles of her pervasive grasp on his heart. He must find the source of her sustenance in the shadows of his own damaged soul and end the parasitic feeding.

And so, he began a new thing. Now he had discovered unbounded love, and found his heart unprepared to receive and return it fully. This would not do! He would not rest until the eunuch regained what he had lost. And he knew that the earth maiden—the keeper of horses and lover of unbridled heart— would walk the path beside him in the journey.

trojan horse

he came, a child,

not quite innocent,

and left, no more a man.

monstrous—dark heart.

war dog. hound of hell.

suffering sorrows,

anguished agony, 

scorched death—his own

not allowed

but inflicted.

he would carry it long

and live its agony

in dumpsters and shadowed doorways

stinking with old beer and piss,

and nights of terror 

and hollow black emptiness.

shattered.

lost.

The year he was 18, his draft lottery number was 7. If he had been 19 that year he would have been drafted into the Viet Nam War in January. It was a wakeup call.

He was a gentle soul from a family of gentle souls. No one ever argued in his family. It was not spiritual or mature to fight, and his parents did not tolerate it. He had assimilated the calm and gentleness of his family into his being from an early age, and the very possibility of combat duty in the most horrific and publicly examined war of his time was more terrifying than any possibility he could fathom.   

The next year, his lottery number was 137. Estimates were that the draft would roll around to his number sometime in the early Fall. But a miracle happened. The Nixon administration began to pull troops out of Viet Nam, and within the year, extricated the United States from the conflict entirely. Regardless of whatever stains may have darkened the record of Richard Nixon’s presidency, he always would love the man for this act of sanity that had been so illusive to his predecessors in both parties. The draft never reached his number that year.

But having escaped the draft, he still could not escape the specter of Viet Nam. Many of his friends had gone. The luckiest ones seemed to be the ones who came back in coffins. America spent the rest of his generation wrestling with the horror that little war unleashed on her children. He often wondered why he had been spared. He was truly certain that to go would have utterly destroyed him, and suspected providence. But why had providence smiled on him but not on so many others he knew? He could not feel guilt for being spared, but was uneasy with it anyway. It lurked in his heart unchallenged and unhealed for almost 30 years.

After a few years, movies about Viet Nam began to surface. He never went to see any of them. The chaotic senselessness of the war still disturbed him too much. There was something in it that he could not identify—something that tore him apart inside even though he had not personally experienced the war first hand.

As the years passed, he never examined this overpowering aversion and terror. It seemed to crop up whenever he heard explicit accounts of violent, horrible abuse of groups or individuals at the hands of others. Holocaust stories and genocide and serial killings all seemed to stir the same dark brooding aversion. He avoided movies that depicted such events, and consciously practiced diversion from thinking about such things. He had always taken a measure of comfort in how repulsive such things were to him. It seemed to anchor his goodness and moral strength.

One day he made an emphatic comment to the Moon’s little sister about never watching Viet Nam movies. Her eyes lit up—his aversion was too strong. There must be some dark thing beneath it that she could explore.  

She prodded him to explain it and for weeks they discussed it. Then one day, it came clear to them both. The problem of Viet Nam was not that violence had been done. There were accounts of violence every day in the news. There were instances of violence everywhere in the entertainment media. These were deplorable to him, but most of them didn’t evoke anything of the revulsion that they were examining now. 

The problem of Viet Nam was that it forced America’s sons to confront their darkest, most horrifying potential for inhumanity, and then it abandoned them to the hell that boiled up from their hearts. Viet Nam moved and tore him so deeply because he knew that the monsters forced to the surface so violently and out of time for the veterans who had gone there were no less present in his own heart and in the hearts of human beings everywhere. Viet Nam had been a window into the dark shadows that lurk deep and unmolested in all of us. He had read essays to this effect over the years, and had intellectually assented to their theses. But this was different. Those essays had not touched the shadow in his own heart. They had been ideas to him. This was his own shadow. 

Now he saw that his aversion to deeds of inhumane evil was not so much an indication of his own moral strength but rather a deep dread of his own capacity to move in such dark places himself. What would it take to push a gentle, peaceful man like him into an unthinkable act? He knew that the world he lived in was capable of such a push. The things that were so repulsive to him were examples of just such a push—examples of people much like him who found themselves in circumstances that left no moral high ground; no clean way out. Or people who had been pushed over the edge into pain that deadened their hearts to their own humanity.  

The fact that his life had not pushed him so far was little comfort. He was clearly aware for the first time in his life that the darkest, most diabolical evil he could imagine was within his capacity. He had after all, been the one who imagined it. And he began to see how his upbringing had loaded the shadow with moral urgency. It had not just been good to be calm and peaceful and full of gentleness in his family—it had been mandatory. The struggle to overcome evil had depended on it. He had carried the banner. He had fought the good fight. And yet he had always been beset with this nagging undefined horror within. He was a Trojan Horse, and so, could never risk a moment to rest.

 He began to grow a deepening sense that he must come face to face with this black potential and learn from it. This would be the only hope to overcome its terror. Only by knowing it well, measuring its reach, testing its energy, could he trust his ability to live with it in balance and peace. This was perhaps, the greatest challenge he had encountered thus far in his life. It entailed walking into utter darkness to encounter monsters made of shadow. He must feel his way along, and trust his heart in darkness as well as he had learned to trust it in light.

the center point of love

For over a month he did not write. A tiny wisp of white cloud had been drifting quietly, far off on the horizon of his heart for many months, and now suddenly it began to grow and spread and darken across the expanse of his sky. There was fear and danger and foreboding in it. The cloud spread rapidly and grew black with a reddish churning intensity and fury. It blotted out the late summer Sun. It hung low and heavy with pain and torment welling up in its breast. It was the raging storm of lost love, and he knew it had come for him now. He knew it would not be denied. He knew he could not hide, or run, or argue or trick it out of the prize it had come to claim.

For as long as he had known her, he had loved her. For nearly as long, he had known that she loved him too. But with all this knowing, there had always been a distinct difference in the nature of their feelings toward each other. They had danced around the awkwardness of it. They both cherished the connection they had, and were not willing to harm it. But always, the little cloud lingered on the horizon. Occasionally it drifted across the Sun, dropping the temperature perceptibly.

Now suddenly the cloud had a life of its own. He was aware that he must answer to the dark thing, and now was the appointed time. He knew that the love he had envisioned and nurtured toward the Moon’s little sister was not to be fulfilled. At first, his heart caved in under the stifling force of this bleak oppression. How could he live without the hope of their love? What substitute could he ever hope to find that could rival the power and beauty and joy and sweetness they shared? He was utterly undone, and spent days lost in despair.

But as usual, she remained clear since it was not her heart that was breaking. She knew the strength and nature of her love for him, and was steadfast, though not certain that he would be able to continue their sweet friendship in the face of his horrid, heart wrenching loss. He had hoped for romance to flower between them. She had never been moved clearly in this direction, and to his bitter comfort, had not pretended for his benefit.

Now, after nine months of deep, close intimacy, he came face to face with reality. What they had shared had not stirred romantic passion in her heart, and it was not reasonable to expect that anything further that could happen between them would do so. She was the trusted friend of his deepest heart, but would never be his lover.

The thick smothering sorrow and heart wrenching loss of this fact settled over his world on Friday afternoon. It was more than he could bear. He agonized and thrashed his way through a long sleepless night and into the empty lifeless light of a crisp clear Saturday morning. They talked that Saturday. It was torture for him, but in spite of his agony, he could not turn his back and sulk away. He must engage his sorrow. He must not allow it to swallow up their friendship. As always, she seemed strong and clear and able to weather his storm.

As Saturday wore on into Sunday, he began to embrace the feelings of sadness and longing and fear and anger that washed over him in wave after wave after wave of unrelenting anguish. He found that as he opened himself fully to the feelings—as he devoted his entire force of being to them—they were transformed from oppression and constriction into open expansive energy. There was a miracle in the works. There was a transformation taking over his heart that he could never have dreamed possible out of such bitter, crushing sorrow.

As Sunday wore on into afternoon, he began to realize that he had never embraced his grief for any relationship loss he had ever experienced. He had always doggedly pushed back against the feelings for weeks and months and even years, until the pain eventually gave up the bruising battle against time. But this time was different, and he was discovering a new sweetness and power in these wrenching hard miseries. First, he turned his attention to his divorce, and then to the loves he had known and lost long ago in his youth. He let waves of heartache swell up out of each of these broken dreams. And as they flooded up from forgotten places, he embraced each of their sorrows with tender enthusiasm.

Anguish was transformed. Now he began to wash and drift in a rising flood of joy and peace and acceptance. The hurt and sorrow and brokenness of four lost loves welled up and flooded his heart before sunset. Feelings of sorrow and grief from each of them had risen to the surface, and all were still present with intense depth and richness in his heart. He had embraced them one by one. He had received them passionately and with tenderness. Now, they could not harm him. Now, these horrible monster feelings that he had run so desperately away from throughout his whole life were becoming his most cherished prizes.

He spoke to her again. Now, his sense of loss and longing were tempered and sweet. There was a strength in him that he had not known before. He still loved her just as he always had. But he had found the center point of his love. It did not rest in her, as he had always assumed that it did. It was somewhere deep down inside his own heart. He had discovered his own joy. He had discovered his own capacity to live and love and embrace even the darkest experiences of loss and rejection and loneliness. Now he could love her without concern for her response—regardless of whether or not romance ever bloomed. Now he could hold the full body of that love in his heart and move on, strong and sure in his own balance and rest. Now, for the first time in his life, He drew love from deep within himself rather than tapping into the heart of another. The transformation could not be expressed in words. The field of energy and peace and comfort emanating from within him was new and uncharted. Sorrow and longing were still present. In fact, they were magnified in this new life bubbling up within him, but they were strangely comfortable and welcome. Love had found its core.

He did not know what tomorrow would bring. He knew that his friendship with the little sister of the Moon would endure and thrive outside the quest for romance. He knew that she had been the catalyst for the most powerful experience of his life thus far. He had found that all his past loves still lived within him waiting for this transformation. And so, he knew that she too would always hold her sacred place in his heart He also knew that he was still eager to reach out to share his love. He would enter into love with a clear, strong, open heart, as he had never done before in his life. Now he would focus for a time on nurturing and cultivating that strength and clarity and openness as he ventured out into his big wide new world.