Just Listen...

I have the great pleasure to find myself at the Circle of Love, in Kelowna, Canada. This gathering of talented and gifted expressions of the Divine has touched me deeply. And while I feel drawn to express a little of my experience with you from today, there is nothing that I could write that could possibly capture the moment itself. Like the difference between the physical world and the spiritual one, my words are but a shadow, a pale reflected projection. But, I shall recklessly stand in my desire to fan your fire anyway, and share with you some of my fire from today.

I found myself in caught in a brief moment of panic. I had been journaling and writing some thoughts and suddenly looked up. The anxiety I felt had managed to make the heat of the sun dissipate from my neck; in the cold of the moment I suddenly realized that, 'I don't know' and yet there I was writing about things I thought I knew.

In that moment it became clear that if I didn't know then what was the point of writing. I pondered this for the briefest of moments. And before I was able to prolong this fixation Reverend David Leonard walked by. And following an exchange of greetings I shared what had just happened to me.

"Well my dear boy, there's nothing to be found in the book or your words. Just listen and it will be revealed."

I walked from that exchange and took it with me into the day. And what a beautiful day it was. The morning session featured Margaret Starbird. This is the woman who had over the past 20 years or so challenged her Catholic faith and embarked upon a quest to answer questions such as:
- Did Jesus have a bride?
- Who was the bride?
- And why had she been lost?

The result of her questions led to books such as the Lady and the Alabaster Jar, and In God's Name. In turn, her books inspired people such as Dan Brown to write the Da Vinci Code. Her story is an amazing one, and I am not about to belittle her expression through any crude reflection of my own.

But what I did do was listen. And in that listening I found myself in tears at the end. As what had been shared sunk in one line in particular stood out. She spoke that the choice to deny the bride of Jesus had led to tragic consequences. And from the standpoint of the material world I could feel compassion for victims of the inquisition, the patriarchal oppression of the feminine, and the lost opportunity of a world dominated by a lack of balance repressing the fusion of masculine and feminine in our thoughts, words and deeds.

And in my tears, as I considered what had just stunned me the following words flowed from my pencil. I count it my privilege to have then been able to find Margaret and share these words with her. For as much as I could feel compassion for the suffering, I knew that in the spiritual world all was well. That there her quest was an example of something worth rejoicing for.

Tragedy's Rejoice

Thank you for your quest,
For the limb you climbed along,
Sharing the fruit of your questions,
Your hearing the answer's song.

How many seeds have been lost,
Cast both to wind and ground,
both the tragedy and rejoice,
Bellows of union's sound.

Yet those questions, answers and numbers,
That you so artfully brought together,
Now offer forgiving in tragedy,
Both fish now swimming forever.

(c) Copyright 2o09, Carmien Owen