Be Still and Know I Am Love

I have been stripped...I am bare-naked...gone are the ways I have guarded myself in the past, gone are the ways I have propped myself up, soothed my heartbreak, avoided colliding with life and love. I have never felt so open and vulnerable...I have never been so immersed in the mystery...so out of control and blinded by the dark night. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I? There are times when I am not sure I can withstand the fire's burning, the continued melting away of all that is not me. Will there be anything left when the fire's work is done? I pray for the diamond of my soul to be unearthed, revealed, illumined...I ask that what is True, what is essential, what is real be ressurrected in my core, and spill over to take form in my life. I feel the despair of wanting this dark night to be done...for the purification of my Spirit to be complete. I want so much to get on with it...to write the book, to speak, to do spiritual counseling. I want to serve Life, I want to awaken Love. My friend Lisa said to me today, "you are doing your work Anakha, this is just the hardest part for you." I am surrendering again tonight. Surrendering to the Will of God...surrendering to the Way of Love. I asked for this. I asked for my sacred heart to be awakened...I set out to become love...this is the way...this is the way. I read a poem by Hadewijch of Antwerp tonight (posted below) called Imagining...she was a Christian mystic...part of my lineage. One of the lines in the poem says, "I will belong to her (Love), whatever she may be, Gracious or merciless; to me it is all one." I surrender...I will belong to love...I will be penetrated by the Divine, I will trust that when the time is right...I will surface into life...I will move forward and bring these inspired words into the world. When the time comes...I will be ready. And, as I write these words I hear the voice of one of my seminary teachers saying, "God is on time, in time, every time."

And so it is. Pray with me. Pray for me. I want this ressurrection. I want to be useful in this journey of love's eternal, internal awakening.

I will be still and know I am Love.
The Beloved is with me, the Beloved is with all of us.
Amen.

Her deepest abyss is her most beautiful form;
To lose one's way in her is to touch her close at hand.
To die of hunger for her is to feed and taste;...
We can say yet more about Love:
Her wealth is her lack of everything;
Her truest fidelity brings about our fall;
Her highest being drowns us in the depths;...
Her revelation is the total hiding of herself;
Her gifts, besides, are thieveries;
Her promises are all seductions;
Her adornments are all undressing;
Her truth is all deception;
To many her assurance appears to lie---
This is the witness that can be truly borne
At any moment by me and many others
To whom Love has often shown
Wonders by which we were mocked,
Imagining we possessed what she kept back for herself.
After she first played these tricks on me,
And I considered all her methods,
I went to work in an entirely different way:
By her threats and her promises
I was no longer deceived.
I will belong to her, whatever she may be,
Gracious or merciless; to me it is all one.
- Hadewijch of Antwerp