“One might say, I have decided to marry the silence….
The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.”
“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity.
a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.”
— Thomas Merton
I am torn between two callings. One calls to me like a quiet impulse, a feint throbbing within, steady like gravitational pull, forever sinking me deeper into silent emptiness. The other begs me to be as fully in the world as possible, to take part in the tumult, to care about the center and the periphery, to allow my heart to be broken, to revel in grief.
I don’t exactly know how to respond to either one. I know they are related, I learn from both, and I feel so inadequate, so oblivious, so human. I hurt with aliveness. Each beguiles me, de-centering me, keeping me forever off balance, asking me to seek something new and un-named from the darkness. I am alone and I am accompanied. I could be overwhelmed at any moment, and I am in love with surprise. My being resonates with these unheard sounds, and I find myself turning, not knowing what has found me. At least I’m called, crazed with delight and horror.
The world I live in is so mysterious, so demanding, so absolutely beautiful, that I can’t believe I’m part of it. I am only the stutter that precedes astonishment. I want to learn from myself, to occupy this portion of time and energy well, but I am too dumbfounded, too flabbergasted. Bafflement plays with my mind. Words like this come out of me, and I know I have no passport of understanding. I am naked, an unwashed innocent, playing at being human, wishing I knew better, but going along with the current.
I am torn by two callings. One says be still, notice how full the emptiness is. While the other begs me to wear my brother’s clothes, to feel my sister’s heart, to break in all the fore ordained places, to go to all the places where love can take you, but cannot itself go. Each offers a kind of enlightenment, but combined, they coax one beyond.
Aging has made me a stranger to myself. I am both more capable than I was, and less capable. I now have wrinkles that reveal me, a tired being, worn into submission, glorified by the unpredictable. I am wizened by what has enthralled and shaken me. I know now I am not mine, just a shadow of who I used to be, and a snowflake of originality. I should be satisfied knowing that, but I still feel called by these twin attributes of mystery.
Gray, restless, and strangely alive.
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