Surrender with a Sigh part IV
It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it." Mary Oliver Female Irish Names DAMHNAIT: "Little fawn." Irish/Gaelic name composed of the word damh "fawn" and a ... DERVLA: Irish form of Gaelic Deirbhile, meaning "daughter of a poet. ...
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be ~ Lao Tzu
He froze in his tracks. Walking down from the Unknown Mountains he stopped at a bend in the trail and looked out over the valley. The sun was setting on the hills in the west with the last light glowing over the houses below. Smoke from hearth fires, rooms with lanterns burning inside, families finishing dinner getting ready for the night’s rest. Late afternoon light casting long shadows like boney fingers pointing a farewell. The path marked with large worn granite stones with each stone hand hewn and placed as a tread along the circuitous pathway from the Unknown Mountaintop. Each stone weighing far more than three men could lift. The mountaintop loomed high above him. He could see the peak where he had been and then in an instant it was covered in cloud and wispy twirling fog and he wondered if he’d seen it at all. His home was down there somewhere— his family waiting for him. The young man’s head still swam with the memory of the ancient knowledge that had been bestowed as a gift into his hands, that had touched his heart, had medicated his wounds, had surrounded his grief with light. The memory of the elder spirit embracing him and the small phoebe surrendering secrets— such love, devotion, loyalty, appreciation, patience, trust. His body was still wracked, his heart torn out and lost, his cheeks still stained with tears of appreciation from the visions he had received. He felt annihilated by the double edge sword— one edge the piercing ache of grieving agony and the other edge the blinding, liberating light and memory of the divine wisdom. The cutting stroke cut only deeper with the intense contrast the light and the dark held against each other. Standing there, his life felt tenuous, a big grey ball of emptiness and confusion.
His stomach dropped, and chills ran down his spine. How well do you remember your daughter’s smile? How well do you remember that you will not see it again? Even now, he was still waiting for her smile, her voice, her recognition to somehow appear. Waiting. He whispered her name, wishing she could help him get through this tenuous, grey moment. The air was still and silent. The sun now behind the edge of the western mountains and the last light seeped into the dark web of evening. His breathing became shallow and panting. His body started shaking. A liquid boiled in his stomach, churned, and the heat rose through his body and into his limbs. Numbing. The kettle was boiling. A chemical reaction occurring that emulsified the grey emptiness into a roiling ball of pain. An iron rage gathered like an assaulting army behind his eyes and the flames of their anger scorched his forehead. He wanted to torch the entire valley with himself in the middle of it. Send down tons of water and wash it all away. He reached down upon the trail and tore up a large stone like he was pulling up a root from his garden. With some kind of super human strength lifted it, twice his weight, over his head and with both arms and with a cry tossed it over the edge. The roar of his voice tore apart the silence of the valley like an avalanche of raw chaotic energy. The granite boulder tumbled down the hill— thrashing through the brush, over knoll and plants, over small insects and burrowing animals, over grass and newly formed flowers. The rock bounced off a young oak tree and a startled fawn ran from its nesting place and sprung into the air like coiled spring shooting a doll into the air.
Without thought or meditation, but with some estranged primal instinct that tore through his body, he pulled out his bow and released the arrow into the air with its course determined by the insanity and delusion of the rage that was shattering that moment. Not a true path, the arrow landed in the deer’s shank. The rock was now on its ordained path downward, thrashing through the crumpled brush and landed in the river below with a cacophonous splash. The small deer slowly raised upon a knee, gathered its senses and disappeared into the forest with all the speed and strength its small body had left for the survival of its species. The moment the arrow had left his bow he knew he had made a terrible mistake. Some mistakes have a place in the scheme of your life; some leave a terrible scar that changes the course of history itself. If he had another arrow at that moment he felt that he could ram it through his own heart. Instead the grey silence had returned. But now it carried emptiness, it carried anxiety. It was deafening and he felt that he was going absolutely crazy. He shook off the feeling like it was a bad smell that he could stuff into his pockets. It was his duty as a hunter to follow his kill, find it, clean it and prepare it with proper respect to bring back to his family, to nourish them in their time of sorrow. Yes, that was his duty. So he followed the track of blood. The sun had set and it had become dark. There was no moon and the only light was that from a few early stars. The blood was luminescent, but the cold and dark deterred his search.
He had become lost from the mountain path. He felt delirious, tripped and fell headlong down the same hideous route his boulder had taken. He gashed his head, twisted his ankle, scraped his arm, broke his ribs and then like that stone, landed in the water. The bruises he inflicted upon himself were nothing compared to the bruises that had now been brandished upon the delicate surface of the hillside. Desolate and discouraged he walked through town looking at the small homes with their soft lights and soft lives glowing in the background. His body torn, his heart shattered, his pride abused, his frustration vibrating and his shame trailing him as if it were the dark shadow of the fawn’s blood. All of this he stuffed into his pockets as he walked through the town. When he arrived home it was close to midnight. The family sound asleep. His wife rose from her bed at the sound of his limping footsteps. She also had not slept in days and had laid awake waiting, wondering, where he had gone. Her sadness for her daughter was like removing the blood from her body, the air from her lungs. She cried so hard that she’d scared herself and she’d cry again. An endless cycle. She was so relieved that he was back, finally, but what came from her lips were the words, “Where the hell have you been?” A tirade of emotions were set loose about how they were suffering, and lost and hungry and confused and where the hell had he been when they needed him, and look at himself, dirty, wet, bruised, bleeding. “Your drunk and no good, you’ve always been no good.” Her tears streaming like a marching army and they were attacking. She meant not a word of it, her emotions being far stronger than her sanity.
What he wanted to say was— “My dearest love, I am so sorry I’ve been gone. I was lost without you. I was blind and was led to a mountaintop. I was held in the arms of a wise old woman who knew all the answers by asking the important questions. I cried. Things became clear. But returning home I became confused again, my anger, my grief, my wounds, overwhelmed me and I shot an innocent fawn. I love you, will you help me? Can I help you? We are meant to do this together.” But what he said was: “I’m tired, let’s talk in the morning.” His wife too distraught to care let her anger collapse like a deflated balloon and turned to sleep. He sighed, the air of a thousand lifetimes escaping his lungs, got into his bed— the soldier limping back from the mythical battle, returning unwanted and alone. And that was the last they spoke of it. The seasons passed and winter arrived with its first rains. There was no time that it became easier, sometimes duller, sometimes for a moment forgotten as he trudged in his daily duties. It was a year of firsts. His children went back to their schools; his wife still wore black but slowly moved into the everyday pace of things. There was a shroud that hung over everything they did. Their daughter was missed beyond words and words for it no longer had meaning. By now the village had cooked their meals, had held their vigils, had sang their songs, had said their condolence, and now had gone back to attend their families and their own tribulations and lives. Did they judge him for her death, did they judge him for not grieving enough, for too much? Did they judge him for the confusion that he now brought with him wherever he went? Did people actually walk to the other side of the street when they saw him approach?
He had never spoke to his wife or his family about his mountaintop visions, the old woman, or the small phoebe. By keeping something so important a secret, by keeping his feelings hidden inside his shell something shifted and became sideways. The first few weeks he had searched for the injured fawn, had left daily to find a sign of it. By now he imagined that a cougar had found the injured deer and had made an evening meal of it and so he never went back. His ability to hunt had never been so compromised. These were hard times, everyone in the village suffered, animals were scarce, crops were thin, weather was unpredictable, and his sense of rhythm and feelings were off. He was left to trap small game, rodents and birds. Something gnawed inside his stomach, a vague knowledge of self-incrimination haunted his spirit, seeped into his daily life. He constantly daydreamed of that hilltop. Held onto his secret with a primal necessity of survival. Although her bones were ancient, her hair thin and white, her skin wrinkled and saggy she slowly transformed in his mind and became the idealized feminine dream of love, truth and beauty. He tortured himself with a relentless idolization. His romanticized memory turned into longing for something he could not reach and so he reached for nothing— he and his wife drifted apart. They found it easy to blame their sadness, their confusion; they found it easy to use the lack of intimacy created from the exhaustion of their grief, their daughter’s death; they found it easy to use the complexities of healing their family and the fear of survival when prosperity seemed so vulnerable for the reasons they were drifting apart. They slept nightly in their separate worlds. And the dark winter nights and the strange weather continued.
On the hillside something else was occurring. The granite trail to the mountaintop was changing. The stone that had been removed opened a space for water to course through. As the water changed direction it found the scar that he and his rolling stone had created. The water following its new course dislodged more stones from the path and the scar became deeper. Plants were uprooted, small families of rodents and nests of insects were destroyed, small trees with honeybees were extricated and washed down the slope. Suddenly the delicate balance of the pristine hillside and all its abundance had been tilted from its natural axis and the water rushed into a gorge 10 feet deep one day and then 20 feet wide the next. Rocks rolled into the river along with trees. Fish were trapped; otters and beavers were maimed. A dam of debris blocked the runoff and a lake began to form and smothered more land and animals under its wet blanket. Enough water rising to wage a war of nature against man where man stood no chance of survival. His life seemed to be going through the motions of living. His wife also was suffering from the wounds that life had thrown upon them but he had lost his patience with her sorrow. She could cry, why couldn’t he? He had seen truth and beauty on that mountaintop and all this was so dismal in comparison. He felt unloved, but more—an undefined anxiety beset against him by injuring the deer, damaging that moment; transforming everything that was given to him as sacred into a feeling of profane. Perhaps he was to blame for his daughter’s death. Perhaps that was what everyone was thinking behind his back. His wife and children, did they think that, his friends, the village? Did his family really need him, love him. Did he even deserve their love?
He slept little and tried not be preoccupied with such painful considerations. But this night he had a dream that awoke him in the night. He saw himself hurling the rock and the fawn leaping into the air. The fawn and he locked eyes again and this time he felt the tip of the arrow enter his chest. He tried to run for safety but found the trail falling apart under his feet, he stumbled and saw the granite trail now awash as a raging torrent with treacherous waterfalls and jagged rocks. There was blood on his hands and wherever he looked he saw his handprints on everything. He saw the huge reservoir of mucky water held together with nothing but twigs the size of toothpicks that seemed logically impossible. Destruction Looming. The world rushing towards him. The eyes of the fawn still upon him he followed it to a clearing. A field. His daughter’s voice whispered: Out beyond ideas Of wrong doing and right doing There is a field I’ll meet you there* And then everything slowed down. As if he were walking onto a magical stage. It was nighttime yet a strange light emitted from the trees. There was music coming from somewhere, a low hint of a quietly plucked string instrument with someone humming. He could smell cinnamon and chamomile. There was a red lantern hanging from a leafless tree in winter form. It was dark but there was light and he could see something moving, dancing, skating. It was his daughter. The first time he had seen her in a dream and he watched her ice-skating on thin ice that seemed to hover like a haze over the meadow. *poem by Rumi
She was beautiful and magnificent in just the way she was in his life— tall and present, smiling and radiant, laughing and happy, wise and joyful, dancing and out of control with laughter. Her skating was spinning, turning, small awkward leaps, graceful and light, but also always on the verge of falling. A fatherly concern ran through his body. She was going to fall. He ran towards her. A shift in the dream and he recognized his family there also watching her reckless skating. Bring a chair he shouted to his children. “Daughter sit! You are going to hurt yourself.” He was holding the leather-laced boot with its sharpened blade on its sole. “This is the problem, we need to take off these contraptions.” And he tenderly knelt in front of her and held her leg in his lap and slowly removed the shoes. He held her foot in his hand. He looked up to her. She was smiling at him— benevolent, not saying a word. Every feature in perfect detail. Her white foot in his hand and then it came over him in a wave of reality. This has to be a dream— my daughter is gone! And he awoke sitting up, his arms still in the position as if her were holding something in his hands. He knew that field. He knew that trail. He knew that river. He knew that deer. He knew that foot. So he put on his shoes. “Where are you going, it’s the middle of the night?” his wife asked. Her voice was sleepy and sweet. Even with the strangeness of him leaving at this weird hour she was concerned for him. He stroked her head, feeling an immense love well up in him. “I have to take care of something. I’ll be back soon,” “Be careful,” and she closed her eyes.
The night was dark and he had thought to bring a lantern. As he got to the forest the lantern was only making it more difficult to see. He blew it out. The night washed around him like ink in a bottle. Voices were behind him. “Dad we can’t see.” He turned and was surprised to see his sons, his daughter and his wife following him and behind them other voices in the night. “We were concerned,” was all they said. “Walk carefully, feel the earth below your shoes. Let your eyes adjust to the light in the trees,” he said. “I know where we are going” The trail soon became lit by a dim glow. He walked faster and the light glowed brighter. They arrived at the field the same as in the dream. The leafless tree there and in it the red lantern. The wounded deer arrived in the meadow again looking him in the eye and lay down below the tree. The field again washed in a light as if it were stage directed and lit from the heavens. He walked forward. The ancient woman was there carrying a white flag and kneeling before the little fawn. Her eyes met his and stared deep into his body, mind and spirit. Even though it was night, it seemed like there were bees flying around her head. As she spoke, her words went through him like a wind in the trees, his skin felt pricked, the hair on his arms electrified, body shaking like a leaf. He watched his family and they also were standing there watching the scene blow through them like a breath from somewhere unfathomable
and the things you once loved, living only in flickers, this small fawn with bones and hair and teeth rattling its tiny dark frame and with a sigh I surrender and even still, we die
She spoke in whispers but there were no mistaking her words. “All this comes and moves and grows and falls and settles. It comes in myriad of ways and forms. Think of the sun crossing the sky, its daily charge across the line above your heads. Think of the moon rising in its forms and how the patterns also move across your life. You live in a multiplicity of worlds. They move through you. You must listen to this” The family settled in to listen closer “I want you to say this with me: ‘Divine Archangels and Guardian Angels, we are here to ask for your assistance and know that our words, forms, thoughts and inspirations are being heard and manifesting into this or something better for us now in a completely satisfying and harmonious way for the highest good of all. I ask for your assistance in healing our wounds, clearing our minds, and showing us a path with divine intentions.’” Perhaps it was already happening, or perhaps it was the moment, but the darkness of night had transformed with a translucent earthy light so that you were able to see the outline of the forest around them. More bees flew around her head. She reaches down and stroked the bleeding fawn and began to speak to it: “What I am holding here is not the innocence you shot, this is not your daughter in my arms, it is you that I am holding. It is your heart that flickers towards death; it is your wound that is bleeding in my hands. It is you that is dying and living in this moment.”
“I know the pain that is flowing from your heart, the confusion, the agony, the hole in your being, but I see this also— it has always been there. It has been there longer than you can remember, even longer than this life. We can hold these things for lifetimes. The grief you feel from your daughter being swept away from that cliff is the deepest cut of all; yet it still another cut from the sword that slices over the open wound in your chest. It is also the cut that can set you free. Someday, you will understand her gift. But first you must surrender the wound. You must believe that this blood is your life and your death and you choose life even though death will always choose you. It is all occurs in the blink of an eye. A moment caught between the space between time. But you must choose and you must surrender and it must come with the softest of breaths, the calmest sigh from your body as you sit in this field. Surrender with a sigh all that is hindering you. Surrender with a sigh that which slices your heart. Surrender with a sigh that which denies you from your spirit’s love and joy. “ Head bowed. “Surrender with a sigh,” he whispered. “Understand that this is not the surrender of your warrior spirit, this is not the surrender to the foes that march upon your fields, or threaten your family. You stand with your feet on the ground like the deep-rooted trees that withstand devastation and floods and you protect, provide, teach, and heal. You build and then you re-build. You give strength and prosperity to your family. This is the law of the land. You will be a force to be reckoned with. But you must stand in this field of truth and you must empty your pockets of the things you’ve hidden and repair this path you have altered and rebuild the sanctity of this pristine habitat.”
He felt the words like a judgment and his heart sank. He suddenly felt condemned and wondered how his family could still love him. “Surrender with a sigh,” he said. “Judgment is the arrow that enters your heart. It is the same as your arrow that fell this fawn and as you know, they always fly from untrue hands. These arrows contain no truth in their aim, they arrive from scarred fields and decimated histories. Not feeling loved is impossible as this light in the trees is always around you and as it shines through you, it shines from you. There is no shame in knowing this, in believing this, in writing this, in singing this, in teaching this to your children. It is shame when you don’t. “Understand that the wound bleeding in your chest is from your arrow dipped in the poison of shame, and anger, and confusion, and doubt and judgment and fear. Surrender the wound back; give the arrow back! Close your eyes, plant your feet, breath out— this will happen.” It was cold, but her words hypnotized him. A bee landed on his head. He did not move. “Surrender with a sigh,” he said. “In this cold night air lit by the light in the trees— find your family, see them and look into their hearts. See for the first time the wounds that they hold there. And behind them, see their friends and your friends and their friends and see how their hearts are scarred and how their wounds have made them. See what suffering we all carry. The world will appear differently at this point. The lines between truth and deception will become self evident. This crooked, poisoned arrow must be removed from your heart.
Surrender with a sigh, he said See the eyes of your family behind you. See how they love you. See how they need you. You heal your wound by seeing, understanding, their wounds. They heal their wounds, by seeing how you have healed yours. This is not about the words I am saying— it is about the world that you are living and how you are living it. Her voice echoed in the field. The sun hit the tree and shafts of light could be seen like rays from the heavens, like visible fingers waving her flag. The bees circled. Surrender with a sigh. “These wounds are healed and still we die. Death is the moment of truth. It all passes in a flicker of light. There is no choice but to live and love in line with the earth, with your family, with truth and light. Live now.”
“The things you once loved, living only in flickers This small fawn, with bones and hair and teeth Rattling its tiny dark frame And with a sigh I surrender And even still We die
The sun for a moment blinded his eye and in the glare he saw his daughter. And like the dream she was spinning in the air. He could hear the music of strings. He could see the flicker of white hummingbirds and iridescent dragonflies around her. Everyone could see her like an angel. The gift had returned.
In that moment the small fawn sighed its last breath. In that moment he felt his mind, body and spirit clear. In that moment the bee stung his forehead. In that moment he understood the destruction and the necessary repair of the path set in front of him. In that moment the ground trembled. In that moment a large roar deafened their ears. In that moment the temporal dam holding back the brown waters from the erosion broke loose. In that moment he remembered, waters rising, the light in the trees, and then surrendered with a sigh. In that moment the community of villagers were safe on the high field looking down upon their threatened homes. In that moment the winds came again. In that moment rays of light exploded onto the stage like bolts of lightening. In that moment he felt his daughter holding his hand and each person who loved her, holding their hands. In that moment they all wept together.
And Surrendered with a sigh.
Surrender with a Sigh