The heart is a coiled hose of ventricles and corpuscles, dear one, winding and twining in ways too complicated to untie.
And why would you want to? Your dented heart has acquired asteroid-sized impressions that have bruised it, certainly, but also softened it, as well as causing it to ache—sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with love.
Honey, we see your heart hose lying there, down for the count for the moment but doing its job keeping you upright in the world, no matter the latest acquired hurts.
We’re not going to sing the pick-yourself-up song—not even hum it. You decide when you’re ready to rise. But we’ll be here with a hand to help you up when it’s time.
And if you like, we’ll sit with you and watch your heart hose pulse as we feel ours, too.
Watch, beloved— they’ll synch even before we touch, hearts finding hearts, as they do, beat after beat after beat.
I was watering in the backyard by the standing Buddha with extended hand, a gesture of lovingkindness if there ever was one,
and I picked up the hollow resin “rock” that says peace on a stump in the ivy, and it cracked in my hands, the bottom falling out, as it so often does, even in a peaceful moment.
And, hose in hand, I watered the fractured thing, perhaps with some faint hope that it might regrow. But then I saw the sculpture of open hands holding a great heart of a rock
sitting atop the stepping stone that reads Seek Peace and Pursue It, and I said aloud, “Even when it looks broken.”
And I kept watering, as one does, when it is it the only thing— perhaps the best thing— we can do.
“Live in the layers, not on the litter.” —Stanley Kunitz, from “The Layers”
•••
Walking the labyrinth a week after you lead a walk there, you do not have to go far before you find a small stone heart.
You leave them for the walkers, tossing them across the labyrinth like confetti, a reminder that there are gifts on the path, to pick them up when they appear, perhaps taking one or more along for the journey.
And without trying, you find one heart, then another and another. You bend, pick up each bit of love, set it on the brick outlining the circular path, and keep going.
It is not lost on you that you left the love behind. But did you really? Isn’t it always there on every path, in every step, replenished in every moment?
Our job is to confetti it around, the labyrinth now sprinkled by layers of leaves that some might perceive as litter.
But you, who strive to live in the layers, scuff through them now, thank them for their shady lives, for the cool comfort given by the ones still over you, the ones that have not yet let go.
Labyrinth at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento (UUSS) / Photo: Jan Haag
Begins with eyeblinks and uncovering, with sitting, perhaps with dislodging the dog/cat/loved one sleeping close. It begins with rising, the first moment of being vertical, for some of us with the first blush of sun, for others, if we are fortunate, into brightness through a window. For some of us, perhaps we startle awake on a park bench or sidewalk, with footsteps and a glare of passers-by, a blare of horn.
Every day the journey begins anew, no matter how difficult the night or the day before. Yours nothing like mine—you going for coffee, me for tea. You heading to an office—me stepping outside to salute the sun, even when it hides. You nudging children awake, getting them ready for school, or freshening the diaper, or fetching spoons and cereal, tugging shoes onto small feet, then getting yourself out the door into the grownup world.
Me and others like me grateful that our office days are behind us, that our time is mostly our own, filling it in ways we could not when we were younger. Or not filling the days at all, depending on our capabilities, our need for assistance. Remembering that our journeys are not yet done and finding ways to share what we have and who we are.
Every day the journey reminds us that no matter who and what we are, I rely on you as you rely on me—guests on this planet—to walk through life companionably, to hold the door, to say thank you, to water the plants, stop at the red signs, and to pick up the bit of trash rather than step over it. To listen more than we speak and to sing more often. To open the hinges of our hearts and let in some light, as well as emanate some of our own.
To let you be you and me be me, but with a smile, a handshake, perhaps a hug, acknowledge the in-it-togetherness of these journeys that nudge up next to each other—not against. To remember that this moment might be the last with the person before us now.
We cannot say thankyouthankyouthankyou enough.
We just can’t.
The one who walks, from “Luminescence,” Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Sacramento, California / Photo: Jan Haag
