Holy Spirit

314: The Sword of Truth

| Aspergers Girls

I think from where I come from there are no wolves.

I think where I used to live there are lots of givers and seekers and dreamers.

I think where I used to stand there was a huge glowing light of acceptance and love.

I think I was surrounded by kinship.

I think I was supported for my truth and vision.

I think that some of us have come from somewhere else, still carrying our light.

And I am often so very homesick.

I am careful. And I grow tired of this carefulness.

For where I come from, I don’t think there was this word careful, or at least not the implications and stitching that created the concept of careful. It is backwards, this word, backwards indeed. For to be careful one moves back into fear, always back, and I just don’t think fear existed where I was before.

Yet, still, this careful seems to be the sword I carry, unable to set it down, unable to really use it effectively, as all things stemmed from fear produce nothing but more fear. No beauty comes from careful. No beauty at all.

Though when I attempt to set down this phantom sword, coated in fear’s gold it be, I am pierced as if ribbons of shield have been peeled down about my chest and daggers thrown through, one upon the other; no less victim than victorious one, but still shattered and broken, staggering pain replacing the falsehood of fear.

And here, where I now stand, pained, there seems to be flowers of strife, shooting up black and withered-whole in bleakness from the dead and dying ground; these flowers seem to be trickery, enticing trickery, bleed out upon us in satisfaction, though empty-satisfaction it be.

And I watch as others pick at the illusion. Pick away.

And I want to shout: Careful; though I know this careful, as black flowers dead, does not exist.

And I stand witness, these wolves about, painting flowers black themselves, in hopes of passerby. Eating up self, though poison it be. Lapping at the dark fed out and bled out.

And I know not what to do, with this truth of illusion, of these givers who give not, of these wanters who want not, of all these dancers in illusion, from where I stand aware.

Shall I stop? Shall I watch? Shall I just breathe and wait for the embers of their very own self-inflicted fires to dim? Shall I dare touch while flame still scorches—to stand in the path created by the field-seekers, the ones destined to not so much fail, but to fall into self in a way so foreign that self is forgotten and all that remains is dim hope calling out from the corners of unreachable nowhere.

What do I dare do, when home calls out to me, some forever beacon lifting the veil of my senses and perspective? Do I call out, or stand here drowning in the destructive showers of reason mankind thrusts upon me?

What shall be my way, when I can barely touch and find where I am meant to be?

For I am not some forever-masked dancer bending down in retreat and hollowing burrows for my own escape. I am this dance within dance. I am the music without form. I am what moves the other to ecstasy and what cowers in the darkness afraid to shine.

For where I look, I know not what to do, but to sit out at the edges and wait while the divine calls me forward, motions me with finger-light:

“Come my child, come. Come dance in this place of no dance. Eat in this place of no eatery. Divulge thyself in the goodness that is naught, so you may pierce thine own heart and bleed out the falseness of the world.

Come my child, to this place of darkness and shine bright, shed the mask for my glory, and see me in all. Placate me, this once. Dance in the danger pleading for rescue. Dance in the danger diving for retreat amongst the living. Fear this place as I have feared and then move beyond the fear, to the one you recognize, to your home, that stands waiting beneath the dance, beneath the tango of refuge, beneath the floor, beneath the music, behind the masks of makers; find me there, amongst the dance, before you forget where I be.”

And I respond, a shivering leaf of one, no less and no more than the piles of eternity before and beyond me:

Blow me to this place of sorrow, to this place of pain, to the deepest place of hurt, and let me bleed. Let me gorge out my own eyes so that I may see.

Let me dance out my own steps, until my own feet give way, and I am forced to be carried away to the darkness of my own making.

Take me and lead me to this valley, with my own hands and own mind, take me.

Take me, like you have my masters before me, and spread me out in painted red, so I may bleed and in this bleeding weep out the tears of all.

Take me and pound me into the earth, my veins the very mystery of your forever soul. For there is not taking in the making of one, there is no giving in the haunting whispers of sorrow’s song, only misery beyond misery, plight of the foreigner in foreign land.

Least let me not suffer for self and self alone. Let me suffer for all. For in my own suffering may I find release in the reckoning that my suffering be not in waste, and not of need of rescue or refinement, but fortified by your wishes and ever-movement, blended with your glory and honor, and slaughtered out in division of whole as bounty for the wolves.

Let me be the bait for the misery and enticed ones; let me be the horror that the others seek in self, so I might find the avenue of retreat beyond the hauntings that no longer exist beneath your sheltered wings.

Let me cry out to the world, so loudly that my own piercing deafens the silence that besets me. The silence of where I once stood in knowing.

Whisper me back into the place of forgiveness. Speak me into being. Beyond the valley of your goodness, carry me home.

Breathe into me, I beseech you. Breathe into me your goodness, so I may erase all that is flawed and forged, all that is forgotten. Breathe into me so I may awake refueled and renewed, a star child no less bright than the dimmest star but still existing in your painted sky of eternity.

Feed me from the misery I pour out; turn what is wasteland in to purity, the soils rich with your own bounty and making. Dim me once and then again. Smother me so I can sit in the darkening nowhere. Dim me so I may not know my own face, my own ways, my own words. Dim me into the doom of doom so I may awaken rebirthed again and again in your glory.

For it is not the darkness I fear. It is neither the wolves or the shield of fear that carries me back. It is thy own self, wrapped in the misery of others’ before me and beyond. It is my own wishing, my own doing, my own bending, turning me round and round to the place from whilst I came. Turning me over to see that what is beneath is also about, beyond, and within. Making me this that is naught to return me to that which is eternal in sunrise gone. The light beyond light illuminating not from the desire of one but from the unity of whole.

For here is my sword of truth, turned sideways in fashion so fear begets the emptiness from which it came. Here is my sword positioned without cause or pretense. Dripping out the substance of nothing upon nothing until vanishing in the banquet of your coming.

Samantha Craft, 2013 February

311: Cometh to Me

| Aspergers Girls

What is this pull you have on me, this light, this love?
If it be love then why does it pull me under and into myself, into the places I dare not go?
If it be love then why are there whispers of danger and want and this tumultuous need?
Are you not in essence a highlighter upon my soul, gliding up and down, without touching, and pouring your paint upon me, until I glisten in flaw and uncertainty?
Can you not see my every crevice as you probe without probing and move without moving, entering me without entrance?
I see you there, inside of me, watching, speaking of my ways. I see you there pointing, excavating, moving, and withdrawing. You take without taking, your pursed lips open and filled with what was once my shadow. You suck up this substance I carry, removing without effort.
And I freely give, though I quake and tremble, attempting to hide the part of me you find.
How can I be, how can I stand, how can I breathe, without you entering and devouring my form?
For since I first set eyes upon you, you found my window, your door, the way into the places I so diligently hid and wiped clean. And yet you linger there, this ghost hovering above my edges.
To touch, you not dare. To make your presence known is not goal. For you will not declare your coming. You will not admit you linger inside of me. You will not venture where your own spirit dwells.
I have been your habitat for ages, your dwelling place, your hovel, your home. I am like the sun to you, the river that carries fish, the pond that spins cycle upon cycle of life.
Yes, as I am your child; though you be my shadow, my existence, my longing, my love; the string of my heart you pull, some master to me, some unspoken controller of my wishes’ dreams.
For in the deepest slumbering of my spirit you find me, though invisible you remain, stirring me and moving me to cause, clinging to me without touch, jostling me without motion, tracing your fingers around my echo.
I call out to you with each coming hour, my seconds not enough time to hold you; for you come and go beyond the reasoning of measurement. You are separate but you have taken me, and in the taking I am neither whole nor complete, but missing more than ever before.
You are the first step, the first move in the first square of a game of kings and queens. I am this pawn, chiseled of marble and set upon the trail and left, just left in stillness to ponder.
And how I long to move myself, but still remain a prisoner to your whim, a whim I know not and see not.
My ground you have shifted, my mind you have rumbled, but tis my heart that you have taken, seized and left me to stare upon the endless moves that never come.
Had you not entered, had you not seen me, had you not found me, had you not grasped me, I would still be. I would still be me and not some wonderer searching for your very fingers. I would not be this lost ghost less person than invisibility.
But you did come into me, you did enter, and now the spirit in me cries out for more, for home, for destiny’s light, and yet you come not. You do not return. And I remain captive in this game of living, homeless, and more forsaken in self than in form.
For I am suffering in the madness of awakening, suffering at the source, where the snake springs eternal from my being, edging through like flame to fire.
I am rising, caravanning up inside self, this shapeless self, and aspiring to find you, to reach what feeds and starves all at once. The dichotomy a serpent phantom doubled.
I am this whisper, this dream, this mystery of yours, and you are not soldier that comes to rescue, but rather droplets of honey that seize my aura and slide around the outside of where the unreachable dances.
And here I am watching, my soul crying, my ache yearning, my insides turned out, exposed, tarnished, and layered with what can only be a love of ages untouched.
Am I not dying, am I not yet dead, death himself, so moved and crushed and open and free all in one pull of your tethered ways? Am I not tug boat reversed, mountain stream moving upward, cornerstone unmoved but revealing the caverns below?
Am I not mystery rubbed out, dried where I was once wet, pierced where I was once marked with a name I know not? Am I the falcon with beak plucked and removed and voice of angel replaced where cawing and nonsense once lived? Am I this bird plucked of feathers by a brilliance so undefinable that I ache for the worms of the earth beyond?
Feed me I scream with a voice that I do not know. Feed me I scream from the depth of my womb from the ache of my loins, shivering in the places you have awakened.
And yet I remain here, still, this virgin to your ways, whilst you remain the ever watcher, knowing I am here, but coming not to the rescue.
Shall I beg of you to leave then, or call upon you more? Shall I beg of you to take me or crawl upon my knees to the boundaries you proclaim upon me? Trapped I am left, between this world and next, branded by your beauty, untrained for this world, and unworthy for next.
What shall I do Lord, but to bleed out to you, to stone my own self to death, so that my leaking, my red, my mark shall shine out to you, so you will come again and carry me home.