Back in the 12th Century, Hildegard of Bingen wrote:
“We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”
Now, in October, 2020, as we mark Mental Health month, becoming more visible through this online space is a staring down of terror and an attempt to piece together my own sense of the world. To reclaim my own listening. To sound my own voice. To disavow the small world and its strings.
The terror rides high on the size of the turnaround. The world I have lived in runs on trauma’s tide. A place where protective currents have distanced me from that feeling of fit. Like Mr Duffy, I have lived away from my body, the difference being it doesn’t feel little. Washed up with this absence is a fascination with embodiment and what it makes of us as human beings.
What does it mean to have experienced deep brokenness, yet know that deeper still there is a love that patiently waits and flows, even as the knots of doubt rub their presence against the surface? What does it mean to be broken and love? What does it mean when your one desire - to love as deeply, truly and freely as possible - is housed inside a body that has been wired by trauma?
As life has taken its course, one constant among many, has been an unyielding search for understanding and freedom. With time, through grace, faith, hope and love I am noticing that my search is far less intellectual and heady. Slowly, I am sensing glimpses of an answer take up residence in a more embodied way. But, I must stay inside the bounds of grace, lest I get ahead of myself.
It has been and is my writing and my singing that has been the most intimate witness to all of this. These channels give me access to landscapes within that are felt but so so hard to name. Often, through these words and this music, I become radically present to the here and now and to the possible and true future that awaits my yes.
So it is my intention that this space, The View from Here, becomes a place where I share this way-finding through my writing, my music and other creative means. I dearly hope too that it becomes a space of dialogue, where the world we share can receive the gift of what will emerge from our meeting.
God bless.