The Wisdom of Tears Counting Coup behind the Moon

-- for Noah

Your report quickly became epic. It began in a big room filled with strangers, how you had no corner for retreat, how the bus arrived for all to climb aboard – strangers with strangers. You had your doubts. They rested beside the dust of last night’s cobweb, you tried not to get entangled.

In the part about the camp, you explained how they brought everyone together, how the real journey began, how it could end with a brave new world.  So you all embarked, not sure where you were going. Now you know, every hero has to travel through the swamps first, you waded into each other’s bewildering house. You witnessed, you cried, you identified. Tears brought the car around when a truth stumbled out.

You told us the food was lousy and each day was a feast. Wisdom delights most in the fruit plucked from vines rooted in unsavory places. You never went to bed hungry and even added a few concordant inches about the way the world can be. Empathy laid beside its golden retriever, sighing with the Bodhi.

You don’t remember when all the strangers left the room, when you looked inside yourself and only the beloved giggled back. Friendship billowed in that moment like a choir of spring frogs. It was deafening, the whole world in this one place, you at the center.  How many others felt just the same?

Now you want to constellate communities with the new light you brought home in your heart.  Your pledge courts its vision, and your promises want to dance even if they stumble.  You know now that shit makes good compost, makes black soil. You will plant the shining seeds there. 

And we bind our pledge with yours, it is a new spring and the world is brave. Ring around a village that wants no member to be barren or bereft. Ring around a world that pulses with creation, erupting in flashes of love, in beauty, erupting in surrender, in struggle, in courage, in respect.

Yes every corner takes its turn to shine, takes it turn to shadow. You emerged from your hajj more whole because you reconciled with the enemies hunkered within. These are the best of victories, the moments to crow about, and the coup you count crouches behind the moon.  It wants you to come find it. So begins the next chapter.