Eternal Spring - Shattered by Love

By Francesca Gentille

It is the time of Spring. Flowers coming into bloom. Spring showers. Sweetness in the air. Sky achingly blue. Returning each weekend from the stark high desert of Nevada, I am struck over and over with the verdant sensuality that Spring brings us in the Bay Area. It is almost like a physical blow. Part of me almost wants to shut my eyes and become numb to the movement and pull I feel in my heart.

It is Spring - again. As I crawl out of my inner focused Winter cave of self reflection, down comforters, warm fires, cold drafts and bouts of ennui, I wonder . . . am I ready for all this LIFENESS going on? Am I really ready to frolick with the bunnies, hop with the chickies? Roll in the hay? And if not now then when will I be?

Dreaming of dark men on horseback, Robert Redford in my bed, new theatre productions. I wonder about my inner wild stallion, my impetuous rake, my gracious aging director and my need for drama. Often in the Spring, I notice myself falling in love with you, then no, it's really you, no - I was mistaken - it must be you. But what I am falling-into? I think it is Love, Life and the Spring force itself. And what I am falling-out-of is my self absorption, my safety, my predictability.

Part of me wants to protect myself from these feelings. Truly from FEELING itself. Part of me would rather live my life on a still stagnant pond. But Spring won't let me do that. She breathes, she sighs, she pants, she teases me with her beauty. She irritates me with her unpredictability. Now blowing hot. Now cold. Now putting a damper on my fine spirits with her gloom and tears. Then when I think I can't stand her a moment longer, she shines forth in outrageous glory and I am smitten anew.

Soon she will leave me to become Summer and something else.

And I wonder why now, in the midst of all this heart pounding aliveness, do we celebrate and remember loss, death, grieving? I find it in most Western World Religions: The Crucifixion of Christ. The death of Adonis, Tammuz, Damuzi, Osiris: Boats a drift on the Nile. Shrouded black altars. Darkness. Wailing. Tearing of hair. Tearing of eyes. "Oh, where has my precious lover gone? Why has he been taken from me?"

Could it be that on our Soul Path, our life journeys, we are meant to embrace and even to love the shattering that Love itself is to our ego, our predictability, the Self we think we are? Could it be that it is as the Sufi's say:

"Oh, break my heart.
Oh, break my heart again.
So that I may learn to love
even more again."

OR as Kahlil Gibran's Prophet speaks of Joy & Sorrow:

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you weeping for that which has been your delight."

I think again of my own life richly filled with love and with loss. Several death's of dear ones. Disownment by my adopted parents. Endings of oh so many relationships and 2 marriages. Yet, would I have changed my life? Not loved? Not risk being loved?

No. It is in the crucible, the sacred container, the sparring grounds of Love that I have learned who I am and who I am not. It is in loving you my Sacred Mirror of Darkness & Light that I have learned to see and love myself.

I would choose to love, to risk, to live. And yet - - with discernment, with balance, with patience. But even discernment, patience and balance cannot protect me from the death and loss inherent in love, embedded in life, interwoven in choice.

So at this life giving, birthing time of year, of new or renewed passion, I honor the grieving and the loss. I let myself feel and own the intensity of being alive. The intensity of all my feelings. And as the Tidal Moon swings her course through the sky and my body waters, I let myself feel the spectrum of my emotions She pulls & pushes forth.

They are mine these emotions! This is life this fullness of feeling! I claim it!
Death - Life - Death - Life. Fear - Anger - Sadness - Joy - Ecstasy - Love.

"And if I feel I tear I won't cage it. I won't fear love.
And if I feel a rage I won't deny it. I won't fear love."
- Sarah McLaughlin

Will you love with me?

Blessings,
Francesca