The Most Prolific Gift
A day or so before I booked this trip to Marrakech, I woke up with Diana Ross' classic tune—Upside down, Boy, you turn me, inside out, and round and round. Upside down you're turning me, you're giving love instinctively. Round and round you're turning me...— Indeed, I'm being twirled.
And maybe you are, too?
Our world is an especially dizzying place right now. Historical structures are, literally, burning to the ground. And when the world burns, so do our ideas about the world. Our uncertainty about our future deepens.
Our world is being shaken as well. Here in Marrakech, as this city rebuilds from an earthquake last Spring, my days reverberate with the syncopation of shovels and wheelbarrows, chisels and hammers, adding a percussive dance to the traditional tread to daily prayer. When our world shakes, there is rubble to clear away and new structures, rhythms and songs rise up to infiltrate what's left.
While I am here I am taking a virtual course, We Will Dance with Mountains, from Nigerian poet/philosopher/recovering therapist/court jester Bayo Akomalafe. Yesterday he said something that stopped me in my tracks.
He said, "Loss is the most prolific gift of the universe."
Prolific, that's easy to see. But gift? These are upside-down words.
At the beginning of the course he invited us to view wounds not as things to eradicated, or even quickly healed, but to relate to them as portals. I recall Black Buddhist Zen priest Lama Rod Owens teaching something to the effect that our wounds show us that which is most sacred in us. Where we can be most deeply wounded is where we are most tender. Where we are most tender and vulnerable we discover our most sacred terrain.
This morning, sitting on the rooftop terrace, nursing my cup of hot coffee in the dark, awaiting sunrise, I cracked my copy of Neil Douglas-Klotz's Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus. It opened to his translation of the beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Here it is:
Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by love.
Healthy are those weak and overextended for their purpose: they shall feel their inner flow of strength return.
Healed are those who weep for their frustrated desire; they shall see the face of fulfillment in a new form.
Aligned with the One are the mourners; they shall be comforted.
Tuned to the Source are those feeling deeply confused by life; they shall be returned from their wandering.
More invitations to an upside down world, this time from Jesus.
Soul Friend, I wonder, what is being turned upside down in your world? Or, what collective topsy-turvy is most poignant for you? Could you consider relating to this loss as gift?
I know that's a big ask. And if a massive resistance rises up in you, welcome that. Just stay there, noting where you feel it in your body. Be willing to sense yourself. There's wisdom there. No need to push beyond that.
If there's some softness, some little crack of opening in you toward this idea, stand there, peering right into that crack. Is there a breeze coming through? Where could that be coming from?
I was thinking about Bayo's quote about loss as gift as I was receiving hammam yesterday. Fatia was washing me and scrubbing my skin, exfoliating dead layers with the help of a black paste-like soap made of eucalyptus. "Like a baby, madame, you will be like a baby. Lots of dead skin coming off."
You know, our skin is constantly dying. We lose 30,000 - 40,000 cells every minute! That's nearly 9 pounds a year! Talk about prolific loss! Removing it we are made new. Like a baby. This is how we're designed, but how we resist the shedding. How easily I let myself grow old, with fixed mindsets, habits, and identity. But hammam reminds me— in my very cells— I can enter into this day soft, open and new as a baby— with eyes like pools, feet inviting tickles, with a necessity to give myself to holding in order to thrive, with a renewed capacity to recognize my Divine Mama not so much by sight as by smell of her neck.
And this image, being held by my Divine Dancing Mama, relieves me of any anxiety about not knowing the steps. I can simply let myself be twirled.
Soul Friends, do you want to get dizzy together?
Dancing with Divine Mama Mystery, In Love, and for Love,
Lorilyn