I hope that the stained-glass angel won’t get in the way for you, but if so, consider that angel imagery comes under many different guises: Thought Adjusters, allies, Elohim, messengers…no matter; perhaps they stand for our higher consciousness when we are simply tuned in, or on the wheel of life. Regardless, it’s the best and most complete version of Bruce’s treasure of a song out there, so I hope it poses no problem for you.

He was clearly touched by the divine when he wrote it, and as most of the best art in the world, it’s so full of metaphor that today it spun me in its cocoon of understanding and apparent contradiction that closer listening can bring to us.

Please allow me to bring to you some of what I see hovering around the music, the poetry…the fuller vision and wisdom he shares, for methinks he is a traveler, as many of you are, with one foot on the planet and one foot…one hand…reaching out into other realms…into the different realities that we cannot see, but sense nonetheless.

There you go
Swimming deeper into mystery
Here I remain
Only seeing where you used to be
Stared at the ceiling

Yes, his friend had died, and one foot stayed here, and he mourned and wept until his ‘ears filled up with tears’.  He allowed himself, and us, to immerse into the sorrow of his loss…and to grieve, by extension…all loss.  The big deaths have been so formalized by now that we allow ourselves to grieve; but the little deaths of which there are so many, too often remain unexplored, not honored by tears or stillness or the bodily manifestations of shock that human death allows.

The loss of a dream…the loss of a friend…of  hope, even for a time…a cancelled anticipated visit with family (yes; part of my sorrow) come with the little deaths due to the unknowingness of what might come next, what we might find to anchor ourselves anew; what elasticity we might find within ourselves to be able to absorb loss and be born with fresher skin in the metaphorical ‘next morning’.

Bruce watched his friend disappear, but in the end had the grace and trust to follow:

Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light

As the darkness of the mystery beckoned, he followed…and followed…and came into the light; and as the truthsayers have always said about dichotomies: one does not exist without the other, and each contains elements of the other.

My sense if that we are in another in-between place now, within a great gestation, and know that a grand baby is waiting to be born, and we have just discovered that it is due some day, some time…in our futures.

Holy stillness all around
Death’s no stranger
No stranger than the life I’ve seen

Some of us know it intellectually, some of have sensed the quickening, the movement in our land as more and more people awaken and sense the potential of the birth, the power of it, and the hope of rebirth, we might name reclaiming our dying democracy.  Others may be watching and fear the commitment that being midwives to it will entail, or reflexively push away the hope as with garlic and crucifixes…lest the dream of the new babe might prove to be another chimera whose disappearance they know they cannot abide.

Many friends on the boards have told me I am too sensitive and kindly offer me by way of email prescriptive practices to desensitize myself ; some advise more meditation and detachment to erase ego.  I understand and value their opinions and practices are useful for themselves; but I think Bruce has it right, at least for me: feel the feelings, follow the images…feel the depression, the anxiety, the fear…until you reach the light again.  Reach out to the universe, into the ether toward the place that time exists all at once…where we are part of some whole we can’t comprehend, bound with those silky cocoon threads whose lightest touch vibrates among us all.  As though the knowledge is all out there, and we just have to let it in.

At my nascent home website, I expressed this rather clumsily in a discussion about Zen awhile back, and my dear friend teased, ‘Yes, wendydavis; peace of mind is certainly over-rated.’

Many of the recent emails I’ve received from virtual, online friends have indirectly alluded to psycho-spiritual guardedness…or even worse, perhaps exacerbated by the sensitivity to the conventional expectations of the holiday season.  Antennae may be tuned too sensitively  to the relative holding pattern just now in the democracy movement as Occupies develop new strategies to accommodate winter weather and evictions.  To all of us who are suffering a bit more than we’d like, I’ll offer that Bruce seems to have been touched by the wisdom of a messenger that we might choose to follow

From mystery into mystery
From daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light

Let’s humbly help one another to find our centers and feel connected in love and in any community we can create.  Any and all feelings are just that: feelings; not positive or negative, IMO, and deserve to be honored.  Beware of feelings that might cover fear, they can cause harm if we’re not paying close attention to our inner worlds.  I know I’ve been a bit waspish here and there of late, and have been working at crying my sorrows closer to the light. This time of suspension may be a good time to seek forgiveness of ourselves, and learn from our errors, and forgive others as we are able, as we husband our strength for what comes next.

 

Love to you all from a fellow traveler.

xoxo