O Goddess

How sorry I am to have ignored you for so long, to have rejected your loving embrace

You are at once fierce and compassionate, wild and gentle, ineffable and concrete. You encompass all the earth and the far reaches of the cosmos.

You support and nourish all, you emerge from all – even my cold, stone-encased heart that now breaks wide, drowning itself in sorrow, loving sorrow, for the world’s suffering.

The dam is gone, obliterated, no plans or space for reconstruction. From that heartbreak flows love, so much love, too much love. And yet, never enough.

Tara’s Tears

He said to me, “To know compassion, you must first know the dark.”

I fall, I tumble farther and farther beneath the earth’s surface. I grasp at nothingness. I see nothing but black. The bottom must come soon, right? Please let it come soon! The terror of flailing through the unknown is worse than the pain of death itself. Come quickly!

How deep can this pit be?? As I fall, plunging deeper and deeper, I hear the cries of all of the Mother’s creatures. Whimpers at first, then weeping, then uncontrollable, unfiltered wailing, the kind of crying that can’t come fast enough to get the hurt out.

The cries are my own and not mine at all, somehow. I am all of the birds and the fauna and flora and microbes and my fellow human beings.

Finally, THUNK!

I land at the bottom – of what, I do not know. I am alone still, accompanied only by the cries now far above my head. I begin to weep myself, my tears splash on the cold stone, puddles and rivulets form. I sit in a shallow pond.

I cry and cry and cry, my heart busted into irreparable little pieces. Only love pours forth as my tears pour forth. The pool is up to my shoulders by now, my chin, my nose, my eyes, over my head. This must be the end.

But, suddenly, I am buoyant. My tears rise around me, carrying me, floating me upward. Me and my tears gather all of those beings for whom I grieve, their own tears flowing into what has now become an ocean, an entity all her own, gently rocking us to and fro.

We rise steadily. We reach the surface and drink in the warm sunlight and cool air.