“If there is one thing that the faithful people of all deep and ancient creeds believe… it is that faith has no timbre and no strength unless… unless one lives it out publicly.// This does not mean jabbering about it incessantly, but neither does it mean denying that one follows a wild and precious soul life – one that helps to keep the lanterns lit high enough to see by, during dark times in one’s own life and in the lives of others.” – Elena Avila, Woman Who Glows in the Dark
There are words that hold power over me. When I read them – especially when they are together – I always stop and take a breath. It’s like my soul and my spirit remember something from so long ago, my mind has forgotten. It’s as if the memories aren’t actually mine, but part of a history I have inherited from generations long gone.
One of the first quotes I ever wrote down to taste again and again was a mix-up of an Audre Lorde quote: “For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where hidden and growing our true spirit rises…Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.”
I remember feeling almost wicked just writing it down. It felt dangerous. I realise now that what I thought was danger was actually a deep connection between my truth and hers. Since then I have connected through time and space with many writers. You know the feeling: you read something that makes you gasp with recognition, and for one tiny moment you feel less alone. It is those moments of true and sacred that keep me reading and writing and collecting quotes.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I have been blogging for long enough to know one thing for sure: when you are writing, be brave. When I am brave and blog what I am really truly thinking or feeling or longing for, I hear back from people who tell me that they connected to what wrote. When I am afraid and hold back that deep truth out of fear of showing too much, I miss an opportunity to connect. I miss the sacred.
The one thing that we can all do for each other is to keep our “lanterns lit high enough to see by.” Lets show each other the way.
When I was a teen-ager I decided I wanted to do yoga. Typically, rather than go to a class I read a book about it. The book I chose told me all about the diet and the philosophy and it freaked me out. Be a vegetarian? Meditate? At 16? You might as well have asked me to go to Mars. What would people think?
Go gently.