let the light in: spring equinox 2021

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Does all beginning require chaos? And does all chaos have beginning in it? When we see chaos all around or within us, are we seeing incoherence or incomprehensibility? When I say “the unified self” I mean the self cohered and coherent to itself. Is the self ever comprehensible, fully, to the self? Unlikely. But to say that the self, the driver of this bone and meat machine, is unknowable or not worth seeking to cohere into knowability, is to turn away from the divine in us – and to let the chaos win. To remain in a state of only possibility and swirling not-yetness. This is the great stall and cursed trump card of perfectionism: to make us think, it will never be perfect and therefore never done, so why begin at all? How about a little distraction and despair as a reward for all this circuitous striving?

An answer: Embrace the chaos but do not fall in love with it. Refuse to accept it as an end state by naming it seed, necessary burn, phase to which we return and return as we molt and grow and emerge and emerge and emerge.

An answer: Fall in love with the chaos but only for a moment. Give her everything you’ve got for a night or a week or a year. Surrender to the storm until you’re soaked to the core, saturated to the groundwater level so you can slake your own thirst for years to come. Then step out into the sun.

It’s the spring equinox and the light is out and gracing everything. Even the shadows exist because of and in gratitude to the light. The world and ourselves don’t have to be comprehensible to cohere, to come together in a kind of unified multiplicity. I don’t have to know what the bird’s song means to be made whole by it, any more than I have to understand how to turn and plane a board to adore the woodwork of these windows, any more than I have to know who you are, your full name and first desires, to be grateful and elated you exist.

The part of the tree torn away by the storm will only become apparent when the leaves fill in. It is too large to grow back in my lifetime. I will never stop mourning what I’ve lost, but I will make a home for it among the new blooming. We will never be what we were again, and that is a fact we can use to salt the earth or our food, use for ruin or nutrient.

Every time I have been remade I’ve chosen to come back softer. It may be different for you. Still, I recommend this: to remain tender to the world’s and your becoming. To let the light in.