Ai, my mortality gives me such an ache sometimes. This little face, Chris, growing and changing under my hands and my memories talking to me of people and places seen … and gone. Is my awakening only to make me more aware of how mortal and transient we are?
Rose is here … and Lise … and all the books on my shelves. The moments the authors took serious. Poppies arising in the fields and perishing in a never ending cycle of seasons. Like the yeast that rises, or the surf that churns against the rocks, we are the froth of the advancing front of life. Our brief moments transfixing us, for a lifetime, with the fate of passing forms.
But it is no less. No less that I’ve watched the lines come and cross Rose’s face and heart. That I’ve seen families and wars come and go. Felt the ache of love, and the pain of heartbreak, and watched my youth pass and my dreams mellow against reality.
Our visions clear of the illusions and, behind, we find ourselves stark naked and dressed in animal skins. And we see our fates written in the generations rising and perishing around us. There is no exit here. Save, through our hearts. In the killing fields of life we wait in the sun for the harvest and mistake the joy of our growth for the promise of divinity.
All of it!
Youth, joy, clarity, vision, mortality, growth, love, pain and death merely outline our hearts. For it is with our hearts that we must face these things. For it is with our hearts that we experience living and it is through the heart’s deep belief in its spiritual seed-ship that we can pass the gates of this flaming and remorseless reality.
Our mortality can be seen as the profound price of spiritual realization. That love and pain and our passage from youth to death is the food of Gods seeking birth.
So we must love, must risk, must dream and age and see ever deeper through these illusions. We must witness fairly and act impeccably as we travel this road. We must weather away against our experiences and burn for life against implacable death. We must love each other with compassion and fervor as we melt in these furnaces of time. And we must walk tall in our belief in our own divinity straight through every storm, every distraction, every illusion, every love and attachment and passion. Every realization and mood and insanity straight into our deaths.
For, as Gods seeking birth we can do no less until we have loved, known, experienced it all.
gallagher
15-Jul-86