I fear these things, for I have groped my pillow, but refuse the snow, and none of it has stayed with me, though each has skirted my being in darker moments. I believe deeply that our openness can save us. For God and Nature meet in us, flow through us. And I fear that the cause of illness, spiritually, stems from lodging what’s dark, from stopping that natural flow. When breaking from the Whole, I clog and weaken.

As it is, I crest and crash repeatedly. When crashing, the dark hold on my heart tightens—the specter of recurrence, the rise of death into my thinking, the anticipation that small sores will be called tumors, that sweating, though it’s August, might be a symptom. And though I must allow it, feel it, let it pass through, I can’t make a home for it. If I make a home for it, it will take over my life. That’s how this works. The darkness bites and waits to see if I’ll scratch a hole in which it can stake its claim and fester and spread; physically, emotionally, psychologically. It’s a constant battle, a constant logroll—me standing on my woe—first one way, then the other. I must let the fears and sorrows through. To bar them will strangely give them power to overcome me. I can’t keep them out—the fears—but can’t let them hover. I must enter them, like a muddy stream, let them churn up my bottom and flow on through.

I think our will, when exhausted of its want to control events, brings the self in line with the currents of the Whole, and healing is the rejoining that takes place. And if, as the great Russian writer Solzhenitsyn suggests, a clear conscience is necessary to induce new growth, it’s because the clarity of our character makes a clean funnel of the soul.

Avicenna also speaks of the messenger signs of healing: “When a balanced warmth appears; when the senses grow acute; when one’s movements take on strength; if one is quiet after a sleep that dissipates his pain; if a regular respiration appears, neither rapid nor slow; if the pulse is not restrained but full; and when the breath of a patient is not burning.” This all affirms how Spirit, if welcomed, can enlarge the self.

From this stark edge between life and death, I must allow the elements their flow. It’s the only way to health. To do that, I must somehow sustain the courage to stay open, to embrace and let go, to internalize and cleanse, to let fear decompose within into peace.

Where We Are Strong

WHERE WE ARE STRONG

To the right, the tyranny of rejection.

To the left, the tyranny of being accepted.

I’ve lost good time with these lovers. In the

middle, this slim corridor of beauty closer

to Source than surface. Though middle