Our Fragile Little Lives

Fragile is not a word I want to associate with this time of year. Yet I'm getting daily reminders of how short and precarious--and how precious--our lives may be.

The egg, the chick, and the rabbit are showing up everywhere now and must be handled, if at all, with gentle hands, to preserve the new and eager life within. But these aren't what I am talking about.

The daily reminders are a bit more personal and human, I am sad to say. At this time of year, at least two of my Pagan friends have been reminded that even their own existence is not a given, that this life could be taken away before its time, whether by illness or by someone else's petty prejudice.

It is tempting to get on the soapbox about these things and say 'Bad things happen to good people because ____' or 'Look, Pagans are still being persecuted.' But when you are in that moment and have just confronted your own mortality--on this plane, at least--reasons don't exist. Everything you have ever known seems far away, and you are left with some sort of wordless thought in your head and nothing else. It cannot be described.

Nor is it always a noble and dignified ordeal. The more I think about it, the more I think it just can't be a storybook experience. It is by nature the opposite of neat and pretty. Like Inanna descending into the underworld, we lose the reasons, the beliefs, all that we know and are and even all that we love. Nothing of ourselves is left but the body.

 I can't speak for my friends, so I'll simply tell you about my own undignified experience.  I wasn't shedding seven garments to venture down to Ereshkigal herself. I was watching X-Files with friends in a dorm room many years ago, sitting on a bottom bunk, when the top bunk collapsed over me. There was a lot of wood-related noise and I heard one of three people screaming somewhere over my head. My head was pinned to my chest and I could not move.

Due to my slouchy posture, it was not the gateway to the underworld it could have been. I experienced a lot of pain afterward, but that was it. So many others have suffered more and ventured further to the other side of the veil.

What is there to say about the very thought of a life cut short? I don't have any good answers. The only thing I know to do is make the most of this life. One thing I manifested at the Ostara chant circle last night was to live a full life.

I will do this partly by simply living it, and partly by recognizing the great gift it is. And for that, I must say thank you.

The Thing with Feathers

I want to be angry. I just don't know where to direct it. Angry isn't like sad. With anger, you feel that you could do something.

Should I rage at the chemical companies, the hormone companies, the polluters, for possibly harming my friend? Is it the doctors, the medical industry, for failing to find out what was wrong? Should I be angry at her family for giving her some sketchy DNA? I just don't know. All I know is she's under 30 and facing some scary odds. I didn't know how scary until I looked it up today.

Can I justify what's happening to her? Not really. I could say that Kali just loves her that much or Cerridwen is transforming her in her enchanted cauldron. While it may be true, it doesn't show the mercy of a friend. And my religion is more about kindness to my kindred than the grand plans of some wiser being; what is wiser than love?

At least my faith doesn't require me to look happy all the time. At this point in my life, that would be too much to bear.  Still, I can't scowl this away. Complaints--and money thrown along with them--may improve the longevity of future cancer patients, but I'm more concerned about this one, right here, right now.

If I can't complain it away, I also can't ribbon it away. If I were the guy from the movie Jeffrey who wore a jacket covered with awareness ribbons of every color in the rainbow, I could make all of them teal and it wouldn't bring my friend one more day of health.

Can I help her get better? Maybe by surprise. That sounds better than no.

When I do energetic work on someone with cancer, I get a distinct sensation. It's like pouring water into a bucket with a big hole. No filling up. No sticking to the sides. Any other time, I'd feel someone brimming over or perhaps bouncing back like bread dough after kneading. Some sort of signal that you're done, at least for now. I don't get that feeling here. (I'll still work the work, of course.)

It's strange not to even be able to know for sure of something I can do to make a difference.

And for this one situation, for this one friend, it's not enough to say 'I don't know' and be calm about it.

Now, it's true that every moment we are alive is a gift, a miracle, possibly a fluke but a wondrous one. The fact that it happens for any length of time is startling. Who is to say how long any one of us has?

It is beyond my control.

Where is hope, that 'thing with feathers that perches in the soul'?

I think of Adah, the genius wounded healer in The Poisonwood Bible, who found she could finally reach that thing with feathers with her one good hand, but only after it had fallen.

Yet I reach out, beyond my grasp, so that my friend may stand.