From a moment in the light...

At the Feet of the One

Lynda Allen

There is no place you need go,

No mountain you need climb,

No cave within which you need sit,

No master you need seek.

You need only be awake in each moment.

Look at the delicate beauty of a flower petal,

Drink in its color, inhale its scent, feel its silken touch upon your skin,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Watch the flight of a bird,

See each feather and quill constructed for flight, able to catch and ride the wind effortlessly,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Feel the warmth and fire of the sun,

Know that light upon your skin brings life to every living thing upon this Earth, simply by shining,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Listen to the sound of the river flow by,

Hear its voice, gentle or raging, speak of the flow of life and the natural cycle of transformation it brings,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Be in the presence of a child,

Look into their eyes brimming with joy and wonder, experience a moment of painful, unbridled laughter,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Feel, without attempt to lessen it, your grief,

Allow the gaping hole you feel within your being to expand until you can fall through it, let the deep, anguished cry of your spirit be heard,

And you are sitting at the feet of the one.

Love without ceasing your beloved,

Trust that there are no boundaries or limits you need put upon your love, share without fear, the depths of your being for another to see,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

Let your spirit be alive in each moment,

And you are sitting at the feet of the One.

The Manner of My Living

I was listening to the radio yesterday and there was a promo for an interview that was coming up on Fresh Air. I didn’t have any idea who the interview was with and I didn’t get to listen to the show, but one statement made me stop what I was doing and write it down.  A man said, “My life is not what you care about. It’s the manner of my death.”  As it turns out the interview was with C.J. Chivers, a New York Times reporter, who spent much of the past year with the rebels in Syria. I imagine the quote may have been a statement made by one of the rebels. No matter the origin or even the intention of the statement, it gave me pause.

The words caught my attention because of the truth in them. It’s so easy to go through our days focused on the busyness of life without a moment of real attention given to those around us. Then something happens, a bomb in the streets of Boston or Damascus, a shooting in Connecticut or Tucson a car accident in our own town and we pause and we look. We wonder, who were those people, what was their life like? I do the same. However, the statement from the interview yesterday made me wonder.

Why do we wait to notice our neighbors, next door or across the globe, in relation to their death? Why not get to know them in life? Why not focus more on the manner of their living? It is a simple act and might actually prolong some of those lives. What would happen if we knew each other, if we looked each other in the eye and saw our similarities, saw ourselves? Would someone with a mental illness that could drive them to murder be so easily overlooked or lost through the cracks? Would we have so much fear of “the other” if we saw that the other actually wants the same things – peace, love, family, freedom? Would the grief be easier to bear if we had taken the time to get to know our neighbor rather than grieving both the loss of a life and the loss of an opportunity to know a life more deeply?

I realize I can’t actually get to know all of the billions of people on the planet, but maybe one simple statement heard in a moment of listening is enough to prompt me to get to know a few more lives while they're being lived, rather than after they have come to a close.  I hope so.

Love's Rising

My heart is heavy with sadness and yet light with love today. If all I can do in the wake of tragedy in Boston is to allow my heart to overflow with love, then let it be so. If all I can do in the face of the memories of tragedy on this date at Virginia Tech is to allow my heart to overflow with love, then let it be so. I have no doubt my heart can open wide enough to hold all those suffering pain, or loss or grief. My fervent prayer is that they can indeed feel it. I know the people of Newtown felt the outpouring of love that flowed so freely to Connecticut. I know the people of Tucson felt it. I know the people of New York City felt it.

I’m left wondering how we can shift from an outpouring of love in response, to an outpouring of love in each moment.  Let this finally be the awakening we need. Let these lives lost be the ones that turn the tide. Let this moment be the point of no return.

Let us look back in retrospect and say, that was the moment, that was the moment we rose up in love, that was the moment of the reawakening of our true nature. We will mark this day as the day on which enough of us chose to live from love in every moment, that there was no hate which could stand in the face of our love. There was no anger which could rage louder than our love. There was no fear which could hide from our love. We will look back and say that this was the day when our love held each fear, when our love calmed each anger and when our love enfolded each hatred. The day when we stood as great mirrors, reflecting only love, allowing each person living in fear or anger or hatred, to see themselves truly, in the face of our love. The day when we too see in them our own shadow reflected and forgive.

Let us remember today as the day of love’s rising.

Maria

This is a story I wrote a few years ago. It wasn't an easy story to write and I don't think it's an easy story to read, but I think it carries a powerful message of love and forgiveness.

The story came to me in an unexpected way. I was standing in a classroom looking through a book that a little boy had brought back with him from a visit to see family in Poland. As I flipped through the pages I came to a photograph of a building from the perspective of standing on a set of railroad tracks. I didn't know what the building was but all the sudden it was as if I was transported to another time and place. I could hear the sounds of the train and of other people, I could feel fear and smell the scent of a smoke I didn't want to identify. My eyes filled with tears. I knew I couldn't stay in that place at that moment, but knew I would have to go back to it and write the story that was waiting. When I brought my attention back to the book in my hands and looked at the caption, I found that it was a photograph of the tracks leading into Auschwitz. 

It took me two sittings to write the story because I could feel what happened and just didn't want to finish it and so have to experience it even in some small way. So I waited until I was ready to hear the rest of it and then just surrendered to the story. In a difficult way, I'm very glad I did. I hope it moves you as it did me. 


Maria 
by Lynda Allen

I can feel the rumble of the train in my body and I can smell that scent that I can’t identify on the air, an acrid smoke that stops my breath with fear and I don’t know why.  Hundreds of eyes are crammed close together trying to see and yet knowing that they don’t want to see what approaches.  So they try to look behind us to get a last glimpse of a world they can understand, a last breath of air that is clean.  But it’s too late, there is nothing clean anymore.  All is grey and lost and full of hate.  You cannot feel any humans around the train at the station because the souls that would give them true life have left what would have been their bodies far behind in the horror on the ground.  If the weight in their hearts can be described, I haven’t the words for it.  All that is describable is the screeching of the wheels, iron upon iron, the hissing release of the steam and smoke; even that sinks slowly to the ground rather than drifting toward a heaven that can’t be felt in this place.

On the train their hope sank too, in each heart but one, for there is always one, one who would dream and see beyond, to where the smoke can’t venture.  If not for that one, things might have been different now, they might even be different in some alternate version of what happened here, who knows.  Maybe in another universe they broke her spirit, but in this one, thank God, she held fast, body and Spirit joined and whole.  Because of her I exist to hold the memory of that place.  While that is not a role I would have chosen; to be the keeper of the memory of horror, still someone must live on to speak the truth of it or none would believe it could be true and it could happen again.  Even so, it has happened again.  Have I failed in my mission since now there must be another and another who hold the horror of another place?  I could not have let her down, I could not.  I speak the story again and again of this place called Auschwitz.  Sometimes I speak it at night to her when she visits me in my dreams.  I try to convince her that it was not in vain, but it is me that I’m trying to convince for the horror lives on.  Does the story being told bring it back to life?  Or does it help in some small way to prevent a repetition?  Her eyes give me no answer but they do dance with joy.  She has found peace.  Perhaps I should have found mine there too, often I wish I had.  But if by my story one less person feels the rumble of a train they can’t stop, then my peace must be found in that for now.  One day I will share her joy and tell my story no more, for it will no longer be needed.  Clean again all.
___________

She had no tears that day.  Her eyes were open and dry though tears flowed all around her.  She knew the purpose of this place, within her being she knew.  Yet she met their eyes, those who would actually look.  Most didn’t look on purpose because few ever looked back, so they hadn’t expected to meet her eyes.  Then it was they who had to look away when their eyes met.  They could not withstand the light they found there, the angle of how she held her head.  It was not anger or defiance or fear in her demeanor, it was freedom, freedom despite the crush of humans, despite the scent of fear and death, despite the hard barrels of guns and harsh voices.  She was free and they could see that. 

They could not understand it though for they were not free themselves.  In their way they were as trapped as those they imprisoned.  They would not be released soon by death but would be imprisoned in the cells of their memories of what they had done for the rest of their lives.  She knew that, she saw that in them.  She saw the shells they had become, souls gone in sorrow.  And she forgave them.  In her freedom came the gift of forgiveness, even before the crime had been committed she forgave them.  She forgave them for every life they had extinguished.  And so they feared her.  She who brought light and forgiveness was the one they feared the most.  It was the path they didn’t know how to walk for themselves and there she was showing it to them, showing them compassion.

There was only one that day who could meet her eyes even briefly.  His name was Josef.  He saw her moving forward, the only one with her eyes looking ahead instead of down.  She held his glance and he saw his fate in that instant, he knew he would choose it. He didn’t know how he would find the courage but he knew that it would be there when he needed it.  Many days after that day he tried to deny it, he tried to tell himself he imagined it but each time he saw her he knew it afresh.

Normally there would not have been many days between her arrival and her death, but that was how much they feared her.  They found reasons to let her live while those around her were called forward and never returned.  Never did her eyes waver.  So they tried unsuccessfully to break her.

It was not that she had left her body in this place and yet she was somehow distant.  She had her feet on the ground and could feel the pain of the Earth in this place.  She could feel the collective fear and hatred and ache, but she could feel more strongly the truth within her, the truth of the hearts of all who passed through this place and who were becoming this place.  She did not carry their pain for them but somehow allowed it to leave them through her a little. Somehow she helped lighten the collective pain simply by being and knowing her truth.

She loved them all in a way that did not seem possible.  Those going to their deaths gladly received her love and carried it with them on their journey.  Those who led them to their deaths couldn’t look at her love let alone receive it.  All those except Josef, that is.  He received her love and she gave it freely each time she saw him.  I don’t know if she too knew what he would do when her turn came.  Maybe she did but didn’t know the courage would be there like he did.  It did not distract her even if she did know. She went about her daily assignments and tasks as if it were a normal day, not the day she might die at the hands of those who hated her without reason.  She did not do her work cheerfully but with dignity and grace.  That was what her name might have been if one could have chosen it for her at that point, Grace, but it was Maria.  She carried her light with her to each task and that was all she did.

Finally, they could stand the light no more. They couldn’t look at it or extinguish it and it drove them mad, so one stepped forward to make the choice.  It was Josef.  He led her that day to the gas chamber and as with all things she walked forward with eyes ahead and light and forgiveness in them.  He waited beside her as she, with the others, took off her clothes, the last remnants of their protection and dignity.  She turned to look at him and he looked back, full in her eyes.

He did not take his eyes off hers as he bent to lay down his gun at her feet. He did not take his eyes off hers as he removed his own clothes.  He did not take his eyes off hers as he took her hand and walked with her into that chamber.

Not one other guard moved.  They stood in shock as he walked away.  No one thought to pick up his gun and use it, so resigned were they to their fate.  They were grateful to be near her at this moment of their deaths.  As was he.  Together they stood hand in hand as the door closed behind them, a finality to the sound of the lock moving into place.

There were no tears in the group that day, no pleas for mercy, no terror. They were all lost in the two that were at the center of the room.  All lifted up by the connection found there, the truth revealed in hearts met that knew they were one, no matter their assigned roles or places of birth.

With Grace they died that day and for a moment, or an eternity, brought Grace to a place that never thought to see it again.  Still it lingers in the sound of the wind in the trees around that home of sorrow, lightening it in some way, allowing it to move and be Free - as she was Free.

The Color of a Soul

The Color of a Soul

by Lynda Allen

His face was empty but I could still glimpse his life in his eyes.  A life that no longer mattered here on this field of destruction.  I can feel movement around me but all I can do is look into his unblinking eyes.  He was my brother in what seems like another world.  I can’t remember my own name, only the color of his eyes in the summer sun.  How could someone we don’t know have taken his life?  I can’t grasp the truth or insanity of it.  

Bullets and bodies continue to fall around me but have no impact on me.  Not a tear falls upon his body; they dried up long ago with others lost.  But this, this is different.  I have no words for the difference, for the smell in the air, for the scene before me.  It’s beyond anything imaginable, beyond Sunday school Hell. The sounds register on some level, the cries and orders barked around me.  Still none of it touches me.  There is only him and me and this frozen moment.  Frozen like the cold blue of his eyes, frozen like the blood in my veins.  No anger emerges to set me in motion, to avenge his small life, a life small enough not to be noticed by those who lunge past.  A life unnoticed by the eyes of war.

Someone removed me eventually from the site and later his body was collected and counted and prepared for the last trip home.  They let me accompany him; not knowing what else to do with me.  I had not spoken nor heard a word since they found me there by his side.  What to do with a soldier who can neither speak nor hear?  Ship him home along with the dead, as useless to the battle as they now are.  They don’t know I never left that battle.  Still I reside there where my heart, my hope, my brother’s last breath lay buried among the monuments of great deeds. 

Great deeds; brothers killing brothers they’ve never known.  My greatest deed was being his older brother.  That deed ended with one bullet from the gun of one who never knew the color of his eyes dead or alive.  For the color was slightly different in death.  I didn’t know the soul had color, but it must for it took some blue from his eye when it left him behind.  The mud on his face, the tone of his skin, the ever present green of his uniform, all were the same.  All the same but his eyes. If his eyes had been closed things might have been different.  I might have been able to move or breathe. 

So I flew home beside him thinking it couldn’t get worse, but back home I had to look Mom in the eyes, eyes the same color as his in life, now the same color as his were in death.  Life and soul gone from her too.  A flag, a dog tag, a telegram how can they fill a void so wide?  

I wanted to comfort her.  I wanted to have the right words.  There are no words of comfort from a field of battle drenched in blood and sorrow.  The best I could do was to lead her away from the grave where her heart now lay buried, just as they led me away from the ground where my heart lies.  What will grow where hearts lie buried?  There’s nothing for me but to silently pray that where a heart is buried, love can one day put down roots.

(inspired by the Carbon Leaf song, The War Was in Color)