When Everything Starts To Go Dark Again

“Find your magic.” The message comes printed on holiday kitsch and illustrated on oracle cards shuffled and turned only when a certain sensation moves about your fingertips. But even the sparkle of the little joys you have, for so long, openly received and appreciated has gone hollow filled instead with an ache that pulses and then turns numb. You want to feel but fear that sorrow rests right beneath the skin with a rising tide and a sinking depth that could easily pull you under. Then there’s a small voice that urges you to trust even if you can not see. Listen…

Remember that cool fall night when there was music in the streets and people gathered after so much staying apart and you stood next to the moon? Right there on the street was this polished white whole moon replica and it glowed from within just like the one in the sky and you felt it in your chest and your belly…maybe even in your womb, full and warm. And it glowed just like that inside of you for days afterward. That didn’t wane–it’s in you now, resting quietly…waiting to rise again.

And the time you were at that creativity conference all week and you felt so alive and full–a little too full, really. So you slipped away to a quiet courtyard where you noticed three baby birds on the ground and when you knelt down to get a closer look, they hopped right into your lap without a fear as if they recognized their mother in you. When the parents revealed themselves, you carefully stood up so that you wouldn’t interfere with their work. You walked away overflowing with gratitude for that unexpected few moments, like a sliver that opened in the Universe where you were invited to glimpse another plane. That swelling sense of privilege didn’t deflate. It’s waiting there to fill you up again.

And that first kiss on the church steps on a busy street one August Saturday night. The two of you stopped to sit and continue an early conversation that is full of discovery and a healthy edge of caution. Not the passionate kiss of young people but the gentle connecting of two middle aged adults who would slowly reveal the bruises life had left before becoming both lovers and friends only to get bruised all over again. And yes, you will get to fall in love once more, but this love hasn’t left you…your skin reconfigured to make room for some of his cells to mesh with yours and all that comfort and pleasure you got to feel for a while still caresses the bones and muscle within.

And all the dying who have allowed you to sit with them in final days and hours. Those souls who opened themselves so you could sing to them and hold their hand. They chose some of their final words to be a balm for you even as they dipped one toe into the stardust. They revealed the rhythms of holding tight and letting go…holding on and releasing, but not before they made you promises they continue to keep. “Always.” With you always in the sorrow and the freedom and the mystery and the joy.

Like the ground nesting bees who hunker down out of sight and nurture their young until the sun warms the earth and calls them up again or the flowering bulbs that wait patiently under a blanket of snow for spring to signal their pushing up and opening out, the darkness is never complete. Even when you can’t see it…even when you feel flat and wonder when the joy will come again, know there is nothing lost to find. All that everyday magic, all that joy and light you have been present to before, is woven into you. Listen and trust and remember that it never left. Even as the darkness descends, it moves toward light that will ignite again.