***I‘ve thrown my heart, a raw and bloody thing, out onto the wild plane – unclothed and idealistic – many times. And for my risk, I have felt not only the depths of violence and pain that pulse from within the heart there; but also have bathed fully in the immense beauty that transcends that gruesome stuff.
The whole scene – transcendent glory and all – is now light years away from the capacity of my heart, which has been obliterated in the wake of my mother’s illness and passing. I walk “alone” these days, trying to rebuild it. Trying to reassemble my entire understanding of life and death, which was already tenuous, to say the least.
But for as much indescribable pain, there are also gifts that bear strength just when I need it most. Since my Mom’s death, I have had the sense that, trembling and broken, I am curled up in a dark, sacred chamber filled with liquid, and surrounded by indestructible protective walls. This “room” won’t let me go until I am spiritually developed enough to handle the new world; this new life in which I will have to survive without the constant shelter of my Mom’s physical body and presence. This world is darker than the blackest of nights. But I believe my Mom still guides me with her brightness and lightness, just as she always has.
Within this “spiritual womb” that holds me, I feel strangely but completely safe. There are guardians far outside my own realm of recognition. They muffle unwanted noise from the outside. They turn away intruders. They let in only laughter, joy and warmth. Fun, childlike adventure, and simplicity. They are the band of angels assigned to my healing.
***
I believe that we have spirit bodies as well as physical ones. The spirit body is everything the physical body is not. As our physical forms consist of cells, flesh, blood and bone, our spirit bodies are the composition between physical elements. The offbeats. The negative space. The relationships and communication between all physical matter. The energy-relay at every synapse. If the physical body is the literal text, then the spirit body is the meaning embedded invisibly between the lines. The spirit body is what lives on the last breath of the physical body, eternally, far beyond the limitations of the lungs.
In this context, I feel like my spirit body is developing within my mother’s spirit womb, soon to emerge anew. I have been a fetus in the dark fathoms of mourning, but am beginning to see another world besides this dark one. I am being birthed into life again, as vulnerable as it gets. I will have to learn how to sit up again, stand, and walk on. But with me, I will bring the strength and wisdom that has shaped and reformed my mind and soul in this developmental chrysalis.
***
The next time I open my heart to intimate love with another, I will not do so all at once. I will not be naïve or overly idealistic. Nor will I be callously coated in cynicism, scarred over from a detrimental birth. With my Mom and the other angels holding me in their unbreakable ring of light, I will be open, and will reveal my heart. In so doing, I will be forever wrapped in the gentle silk blanket of my angels’ web. This will always cling lightly to my being, its threads thin and delicate, but stronger than any bars of steel or prison walls of fear. I will be openhearted, open-minded and open-eyed, with faith in higher guiding forces as my discriminatory faculty. In other words, I know that someday I will be healed enough from the wounds of loss to love again. But only because I know I carry my Mother’s protection always, and in all ways.
It all comes back to fear and faith. This is a fairly basic but fundamental meter: If you are making a decision or acting from a place of fear, you will put up defenses, keeping love out along with the inevitable pain born of living a true life - one of depth and meaning. Conversely, if you choose and act from a place of faith, you will move always toward the light of new worlds. You will evolve for having boldly and humbly accepted the challenge to be vulnerable, as my mom did when her cocoon crumbled and sent her flying. And for relinquishing the cast-iron armor of fear, you will be gently but thoroughly protected.
This goes for every single relationship, however brief or of whatever brand, in our lives. Whether referring to a lover, a family member, the grocery clerk, or a bird in flight - in faith, everything is given the glow of eternal life. Everything, in its purity, is made of a Love this Big.
...Playing UNO, & other games with the deck of Hooters cards...drinking both wine and the next morning's coffee out of red plastic cups, rinsed - like the other dishes - only with muddy river water, scrubbed with the exfoliating power of grit, rocks and sand...
Camping in the cradle of Pololu'u Valley was the restful reward for making the trek down into its soft belly. The whole journey was a practice in sensory indulgence of the feet; a visual feast; a lullaby emanating from both the 
ocean and the slowly-swaying forest trees. Hiking down from the top, where hoardes of tourists gathered at the "lookout point" to shoot postcard scenes for their memory albums, Chris and I each carried half our weight in gear. We had a cooler stocked with food and drinks and water to last two days; hot-dog skewers, newspaper for burning, three bottles of lighter fluid, sleeping bags, an enormous tent. I even remembered mustard this time. And Chris remembered Oreos.
With our bathing suits on, (and shoes off), we headed deeper into what appeared to be
then returned to a quiet camp, the fire gently simmering its neon-orange coals. An open bottle of sparkling apple cider sat on top of the cooler. And Chris lay sleeping peacefully on a pile of blankets in the tent.
and drove some more before discovering a whole area as yet unknown to either of us. We
Tired and hungry, we ate greasy burgers and drank sweet iced espresso on the way home.
SIDE NOTE: The scribbled images below are THIS story, before it became print! My Dad got me this AWESOME Flyworld Pentop computer for my birthday...It's like a regular (though kind of big) pen; you write with it in a special notebook. Then you upload the data from the pen into your computer, and you can save the text as "images", (which I did with these). And you can also save the files as TEXT, and the program converts your handwriting into a Word document! It's so cool, and even good for a few laughs, because when it can't tell what you've written, it makes up hilarious things on its own. For example, it kept "calling" Ginger, the dog, "Finger". And instead of Pololu'u Valley, it came up with "Phobia Valley". And so on!
