To Bless The Space Between Us
My stylist asked me what I was doing for Mother’s day, while she massaged the shampoo into my head, over the sink. It’s hard to talk at all then because I am so relaxed, but it was even tougher to know how to respond. I took a deep breath, “Well, nothing special really. My mother died 20 years ago.”” Before I said another word, she was fumbling with her own.
“I’m so sorry, how did she die, I mean?” I lifted my head, still dripping with water, so I could look in her the eyes. “It’s okay, I mean really okay. She hung herself. She was very sick and suffering.” Then she asked me the most interesting question,
“Did you know she was going to die before she did it?”
“Yes, actually, I felt something and tried to reach her for several days. I took the day off of work too.” My mother lived 400 miles away from me, at the time. The conversation was shifting into the blessings that came to me in the wake of her death; my transformation from the same conditions that killed her, other magnificent women that nurtured, fed and loved me, and the Blessed Mother Mary. I see my mother’s death as a portal through which a greater grace came to me.
It is almost impossible to comment on the Pieta, it is so magnificent, and I feel so unworthy to explain its mystery. But I bow before the power of this love. Such serene and graceful energy from the earthly mother of the great gift given by God to humanity. And we crucified it. And she remains in grace. While she holds the lifeless body of this Man-God, her left hand remains open, ever open, to receive the love and direction of God.
Knowing Mary, has changed my life. My own mother’s death prepared me for it. Today, I imagine my mother in her lap, just like this; received and loved, and readied for the greater light.
We are all mothers in this way, when we love this way, the light inside our beings.
FOR A MOTHER-TO-BE
Nothing could have prepared
Your heart to open like this.
From beyond the skies and the stars
This echo arrived inside you
And started to pulse with life,
Each beat a tiny act of growth,
Traversing all our ancient shapes
On its way home to itself.Once it began, you were no longer your own.
A new, more courageous you, offering itself
In a new way to a presence you can sense
But you have not seen or known.
It has made you feel alone
In a way you never knew before;
Everyone else sees only from the outside
What you feel and feed
With every fiber of your being.Never have you traveled farther inward
Where words and thoughts become half-light
Unable to reach the fund of brightness
Strengthening inside the night of your womb.
Like some primeval moon,
Your soul brightens,
The tides of essence
That flow to your child.
Your know your life has changed forever,
For in all the days and years to come,
Distance will never be able to cut you off
From the one you now carry
For nine months under your heart.
May you be blessed with quiet confidence
That destiny will guide you and mind you.
May the emerging spirit of your child
Imbibe encouragement and joy
From the continuous music of your heart,
So that it can grow with ease
Expectant of wonder and welcome
When its form is fully filled
And it makes its journey out
To see you and settle at last
Relieved, and glad in your arms. ~ John O’Donohue, To Bless The Space Between Us
going naked being seen 