Patching our Souls

His was a selfish love

patching

his soul

with all

of her pieces

                     Atticus The Truth About Magic  p. 164

____________________________

 

the pandemic has been

a time of people

and no people

 

a time when everything is intensified

a time when everything is blurred

and slowed down

 

it has been a time of observing

 

observation is a very scary pastime

watching we humans

play

and fight

 

watching as adversity and isolation

as poverty and illness

as the tension of this time

seep to the surface

 

these are, as Thomas Paine once famously wrote

“times that try [our] souls

 

sometimes, observing

leads to lament

 

how have we gotten to this place

where there is so much anger,

so much hate

so much selfishness?

so much disregard for others?

 

perhaps it truly is that we are

so empty

so fragile

 

that we have broken, become fragmented

 

so that love and compassion

hope and regard

generosity and forgiveness have

“left the building”

 

perhaps it is that we have attempted

to deal with our brokenness

by being predators

 

drawing into ourselves what we think we need

from outside ourselves

‘patching out souls”

with money, or power

 

using others, devouring others

in our own desperation for wholeness

 

Today is Fat Tuesday

and on this day of Mardi Gras

when we are called to gorge ourselves

with excess

or at least pancakes

 

we peer into Lent

and ponder the disparity between

 

grasping and releasing

excess and paucity

celebration and solemnity

 

on this day as we move from

beads and breasts

to ashes

 

it is time to think of the strange strategy of the Sacred

where we are called not to grasp, but to empty

to let whatever good there is within us

whatever love

whatever compassion

whatever hope

 

flow through those cracks and fissures

in our souls

out into the world

 

where we are asked to walk with empty hands

asked to scatter our “wealth” around

to those who have less

 

where we are asked to leave our anger and bitterness behind

and forgive

 

where we are compelled

to drop our own self loathing

 

and become nothing

that we might become everything

 

so that out of the ashes of this time

out of the ashes of failure

might rise

 

new creations

sacred children

 

for the in weird alchemy of God

as we empty

Sacred fills

 

a spring of living water

bubbling up