"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you"

Jon just came home from work and pulled me into his arms and said, "I have to tell you! I was thinking about how amazingly good our life is and it's so weird I can't even believe it. We just have this life together! Like, I met you and we had a lot of fun together and we just started hanging out all the time and then we hung out even more and now we have kids together, and they come from us! They just run around and love us and want us to hug them all the time and sometimes we get frustrated and we're like, 'Kids!' But they're so wonderful and beautiful and they look exactly like us! And we have a good life, I'm telling you, it's really good. And YOU exist, and I have you, and you're so beautiful and clever and fun! I'm so lucky to be married to you and we just hang out all the time and fall asleep on the couch together and it's so awesome. We have such a good life. It's a strange life we're living." I told him that I hope we don't have to let go for a long time. I remember how clean and triumphant I felt when I let myself fall in love with Jon. I remember it so well, we were so gleeful in our discovery, and that's never gone away. These precious things. I am so lucky to have lived this long, already.

Right before he got back, I was listening to the MoSto Sunday School podcast with that dismaying spiraling insightful quote from the Brothers Karamazov, and Jared's thought that if we could visualize the suffering occurring in just one minute sweeping over the planet, it would "just break us." It's a fearful thing to have the anesthesia wear off, but I am glad it has, because after working through that first blinding pain of disillusionment and fear, I have come to some powerful conclusions, about what I want to do with my life, even in the face of all that suffering, regardless of what comes next. I know that I have an extraordinarily beautiful life. I am not one of the frozen kids. I don't want to let the fear of pain freeze me.

I want to be mindful and present and appreciate the moments of my life so deeply.
I want to create and enjoy and draw my dear ones closer to me.
I don't feel the same desire I used to, to immerse myself in woundedness, and in some cases I feel myself taking an indignant step back, but I still want to be a safe person, a supportive presence, a listener and teller of stories.
I want to own the light and dark of myself and embrace my "dark passenger."
I feel so much freedom in exploring archetypes and rituals. The canon is OPEN.
I want to just feel the ebb and flow of my life without intellectualizing it or pathologizing it. 
I want to be so kind to my sweet children.

I'm too porous. Poor us.

Why can't I remember your snarls are sadness,
your stings are jealousy,
It's you that you despise.
I meant the most when I made you proud of yourself
You don't see my face now
Wasted shell
The bright crawled out long ago.
I had to burn you to find me.
Like the spiderlings, eat you alive
You expected it, no time for you
Each bite of flesh existed to serve our existence
our unseeing uncaring survival
We sucked unfolded devoured and scurried away
The core of every mother eaten by her young
Some gnawed by teeth others by disappointment
Trampling corpses, we charge onward
You who were my first home.
I can't find home in you now.