The Traveller’s Rest- Cave-dwellers of the World Unite..
Paul is so right folks. The cave can be a tomb or a womb, a trap or a chrysalis. You might dissolve completely but God is in the business of restoration, reforming, resurrecting.
When you come to the door of the cave, drawn by the Love of the still small voice to keep seeking, keep faith, keep hearing – like Elijah, your wings may be wet, your pinions may be tender, your eyes may be blinded by the light but your destiny is still in place, your promise is being fulfilled, your life is often in its second half.
The second half means that both-and is better than either/or. You no longer consume but give. You no longer crawl but fly. You no longer fall but soar.
Language doesn’t do justice to the sense of destiny that is released but here is an attempt:
White ice slides into white water and
I hear a cracking noise as awe creeps round my heart,
puncturing my veins; my blood freezes to a standstill;
Identity flickers on and off in my mind.
Reactions simmer as alien passions twitch spasmodically in my soul and
Already fragmented thoughts shatter – who is in control?
Not me, emotions surging like clashing icebergs or shuddering plates,
slicing through arctic wastes.
Sliding and slipping, I struggle to regain my balance on broken floes
that shadow shoals of whirling fish – I shiver.
Cracked thought-floes melt into black imaginings,
like shrieking seals at their devouring, and flow across my synapses,
visible only to my inner eye.
Disconnected words betray me, generating shards so sheer I know
I cannot survive the public falling. And so, I flail about
While the earth heaves and shifts; I sweat the fear of exposure as,
Hanging by a piton of faith over the crevasse,
I’m pinned by a line I once heard.
‘Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.’
Rope tightly in hand, I trust Him in my lack of trust – a paradox!
A metamorphosis occurs; and within a chrysalis of change,
Lament and grief are lessened as quiet and
self-forgiveness come.
Then, transformed, I have become someone else
and breaking out with no remaining comfort zones,
I risk as I’ve never done.
Stripped but free of strife, I’m positioned at the margins, on a threshold.
And new levels come as I find hope, and sense I’m called to live within a space that’s always still.
As I struggle towards freedom in this kairos moment,
I’m feebly moist with fragile wings and legs so tender;
freshly created strands of DNA twirling in that space within,
And new multiplexed eyes adjust to see there is a future and a promise,
releasing Jubilee.[3]
Colour stains my pinions as unfurling and flexing, they throb with flight,
when, following the rainbow line, I soar on the memes of heaven.
