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Walking the Sacred Wheel - Child of Wonder begins

I come on the darkest night of the year…

…stored in roots…

…when Night is a guest that comes early and stays too late…

…the hearth fire is reduced to dying coals…

I turn inward on myself, curled up in a ball, a sphere of light.

…until I land in the east on the rim of the world

I see my family waiting for me. My heart leaps to see them.

I am a Promise.

[Readback lines from a voiced text and image (below) of "Child of Wonder" -- Joanna Powell Colbert]


I recognize that my youngest self/voice retains edges of her original fear, the surprise of abandonment that dawned upon me in my feminine awakening during my 40’s. On two different days—March 11 and then May 30, 2014—Mystery brought me back to myself, my bodied-self. It was terrifying and restorative at a cellular level. Until then, I had had no idea that a visceral connection to my body inside felt like that.

My youngest life was without physical want, I’d always thought, and materially, it was. For reasons I’ll never know, my mother severed connection to her own body way before I arrived. I therefore had had no visceral connection to her body or then my own body. Abandonment was the sensation I was finally strong enough to sustain, receive consciously, allow. My psychic-soul life ripped open and my body came alive inside through that belated birth-canal. When I’m speaking truthfully to an age inquiry these days, I say what it is and then my body-awareness ‘age,’ which is that age minus 45. Today, I’d say I’m 53 and 8. All this means my youngest years, 0-3, have been held within fearful-surprising boundaries of abandonment, even terror. It has been a courageous and difficult journey into rewriting my story, grief and then forgiveness honoring the beloved, very human realities of my own parents, doing the best they knew to do.

 

Today, I feel a breath of fresh air in gratitude for knowing my body as I do now, for so much Being that was “stored in roots.” The darkest night of the year scares me no longer. I’ve been there, been broken open, been held in abundant physical love so to know its “glowing seed in the heart of the Mother of Night.” It brings a smile to turn inward on myself, “curled up in a ball, a sphere of light.” I’ve landed in the east now, on the rim of the world, dangling my small feet into the spaciousness with a sense of delight.

 

I see my family waiting for me.

 

This line landed viscerally in me in all its complicated beauty… What might it become for me today? These years have offered a close-up view of so much of my own family’s shadow, a mythically-tinged refusal of what is between us, within us. Seeing our humanity in raw display of abandonment-neglect-refusal-and more, I felt betrayed as well as abandoned. So much was an elaborate deception, held in storying so to hide the shames, the fears, the unspoken hurts deep within the family line. This was then mirrored in the elder’s senses of the Sacred, held in rigidly cognitive captivity of right-belief, right-truth for belonging, seen so clearly in today’s congregational Christianity. That pathway to belonging brought me into theological education, into seminary teaching, into ordained clergy leadership. The feminine awakening ruptured all of it with a sense of divine abandonment, betrayal, deception...all while held in containers strong enough to withstand my rage (as it turns out--I was/am blessed by that today). I remain married to my husband who is also a pastor. Relations are restored with my folks, after serious rupture and refusal of all of me as I am. I continue to teach interreligious learning in a conservative religious setting that does not align with my own values...but within which I get to invite awakening to all who come.

 

Today, in that breath of fresh air and gratitude, I see that I am a Promise. For myself, but also for them, for all religious others who come into my path—those who went before, those who are yet to come.


I am a cycle-breaker, you see. A woman gifted to see what has been hidden for so long but can heal when breathed into the stillness, the light, in human containers deft enough, strong enough, to trust in the Mystery.

 

Today, my heart leaps to see them.

 

I wonder who my own Child of Wonder has become, now, since…

 

 


 

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Wisdom Walker
I am a scholar, companion, friend, contemplative, wife, daughter, teacher, poet, and most importantly for this space, a writer. I learn best by entering into practice, listening deeply, and remaining open to those who will share their path and passions with me.

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