Whispers of Mortality: A Plea for Presence in the Precious Moment
Exploring the Fragility of Rhythm, the Ground of Being, and the Unveiling of Life Without Protection.
I am a small shred of fabric, rung through creation and breath. Each morning, I stand humbly in front of the unfolding of a day, not knowing its contents.
I say, dearest death, how shall I live? For each new day, is another dying. There are just a few breaths before it is forgotten. A field of ever-changing earth is exhaled.
I gaze sweetly into the eyes of those I love. “My dearest” I say, “what joy it is to see you again at this bright dawn.” I smell the life of a still alive body breathing with me, I feel the warmth of my palms. “The mountain we cross together is one of tenderness,” I say. “My unbearable delight at finding you with me.”
Already, I see your absence and mine. We are both alive and dying at the same time. There will be only one long blink left.
Dear death, how shall we live?
In the midst of my vulnerability, stripped of pride and nobility, I pray to my body to stop protecting me. My mind, I ask it not to get in the way of this truth. Please do not pull me into a spin of busyness, self-importance, and dissonance. I urge you, dear sweet body and sweet mind, to remain still in this place of truth. Observe this beauty, in the awareness that I am here for a brief moment to draw out the softness of all that breathes. Bright dawn, already dying life. The tender mountain.
Hold me tight to your ground of being. The distance from this place no longer appeals to me. With both ears, I want to hear laughter. Aware of my own precarious and fleeting rhythm and beat, knowing its end, I enter into my heart. Keep me here, in this precious instant. This life. This home. This living, and dying moment.
I know what this life is about. Keep me here, dear body, in the iris of those who love, holding hands with everything dear across this tender mountain. My feet felt. My dilated and already mourning heart. Let me experience life without protection for a while. Please don't pull me away.
Amen, so be it. Alive and dying at once.
“I want the best things of all people to flood one another and drown them in a mutual admiration that causes all of them to sing, each, in their own ways the praises of what gives these differences life.”-Martin Prechtel
As I simplify, whittle and reduce, I realize there is only one thing asked of me: to fall in love before I die. There is nothing loud about it. Instead, it is more a flicker in the eye that looks at the gifts and people in its life, with a clear understanding ironed into its heart. A compassion so deep it reaches into the room of another body, and makes a bridge to safe ground within one another. The purpose of my existence is not to find fault, as we often do, but to fall in love. Too much time is spent defending something ephemeral within us. Isolation through the fortress is just another form of drowning. We forget and deny how capable we are of compassionate love. What latent and powerful capabilities we possess, to neutralize voices that divide and separate us. It is very easy for us to make things our enemies, and even easier to build houses of belonging and acceptance.