My midriff explodes in a sea of blood and guts. My face screws up at these words. How can I accept that the words form themselves and let them run with it? I cannot, but I must really. Otherwise, who am I but a moderator between the rush of Muse-ic and the chasm of belonging?

I’m finally getting the danger of safety. It’s the concentric circles that form a target. The closer in you are to group think, the more you’ve traded away of everything worth living.

I seek and shall find my Yes AND. And it’s not in safety or normalcy or cleaving against the wall in fear. It’s running headlong into the thick of things anyway, knowing our soul—this beautiful wild whole vastness—this is the prize. If we lose a heart or a lung yes we may die, but that is all right. I know I know, it hurts, and I’m sorry. Even receiving blisters or wounds hurts, small injuries to our pride, or giant wallops of heartbreak, terror, loss.

I’m not saying it doesn’t injure us, traumatize us, unleash illnesses galore. It can and it does. What I am saying is this: We must heal, quick as we can, back into the light and run headlong toward our source saying Yes and, Yes MAM! We plunge in, over and over again, chanting AMEN.

Why does it matter? Because all of who I am is the least I can offer. I hold nothing back. That doesn’t mean it’s not all right to grumble. I’m starting to think a running grumble of a soundtrack is all right because it shows that we’re hungry. We’re longing to have more, be more, offer more, share more, surrender and receive countless blessings and, even more, allow ourselves to be conduits of divine light pouring onto this Earth.

Rather than going for the easy prayer of an ending, then, I settle in. The candle’s flame dances. The fountain burbles. I sip my sour tea. My throat thickens, threatening illness. My fingers type their guts out.

Gwen Meharg, drawneartogod.com