Fixing my life

Giving up on trying to be in control, I am learning to accept and appreciate the beauty of 'normal' life.

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I sometimes find myself shedding tears at the most unexpected moments.

I confess that it often happens late at night when I read the ‘Look inside’ sections of obscure books on amazon. It has happened tonight…and I feel blessed, literally as if someone has spoken a liberating good word over me.

Do you believe me when I say how welcome the tears are?

They are the end of my self-serving mechanical like reason. They represent a crossing-point, like those once manned by soldiers at the border points between Eastern Communist Bloc states and our Western Democratic ones. The tears are the transition through the heavily guarded check-point of self-determination into the short, but seemingly everlasting, solitary walk through ‘no-man’s land’ to the realm of mystery and spirit. I let go of ‘self-love’ and enter into the empty, open space of freedom from self.

Does this sound idealistic?

Futile or fanciful?

I don’t know. Maybe to some, even to many, it does.

Yet, for me it’s the quiet fulfilling of the aching longing that has tormented me all day, all night. The deep-seated drive to be alright, to be sorted, to be good, to be perfect, acceptable to others. At last at 11.30pm at night, I find my solace among the digital reproductions of the works of the dead authors of yesteryear.

Books, books, books…

Sometimes it feels as if these books are my only friends, my true comforters. Like gentle nurses and godly doctors of times gone by they treat my wounds gently. They unwrap the dressings, layer of cotton gauze upon layer of cotton gauze, taking note of the dried blood that has soaked the bandage.; aware of the discharged fluids – the poison that has seeped out from within. These authors and their words heal…and they heal the long way round. They whisper stories of words I know so well, but through familiarity have forgotten their true meaning. They go back to the beginning to stories and characters I feel I am a seasoned expert in and they tell me once more how what I thought I knew to be true was in fact just an ephemeral phantom. I realise again, and not for the first time that I am…but…a child! A novice…a complete beginner, who thinks himself an expert because he has finished his bottle of milk!

This death…This kindly release…to my ego…to my self…the writers bring. Yet, they do not bring their wisdom cruelly, so as to induce a shameful self-criticism, but deftly.  They are tender and welcome as a nurse or as my mother  used to bring a warm moist flannel to my head when I was feverish as a child. The water was warm, but in my burning fever it was ‘cool’. Coolness that took away pain. A human gesture which told you, you were loved and more than that it told you this infection and illness was not the end – it was transitory.That someone was in control as you drifted in and out of turmoil and consciousness. That someone would be waiting for you at the end, when you woke up. Revived, restored, alive again to a new day.

The authors and their works act as catalysts for me of divine healing. Their words for some reason tell me to let go of trying to fix my life. Only Mystery, only the holy can heal my ‘sickness’. Finally, I give up. I stop trying to be in control to dictate terms to God and the forces of nature and society on how my life should be.

I let it be.

I allow what is to be.

And give up trying to be in control.

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A Prayer of thanks for emptiness

Thank you tears.

Thank you authors.

Thank you books.

Thank you death.

Thank you life.

Thank you holy, divine mystery…whoever you are!

Blessed be your name!

Yes, let it be so!