Hearing the Song of the Ancients

Day 80.....

Today we rested and integrated. Our visit with His Holiness was so powerful, the afterglow stayed with us all day. It was as if we were still with a foot in another universe. Many times we said to each other, "did that happen?" Yes, it did it was real and so very special. The day's conversations included philosophical discourse and trying to share what it all meant.

Most of all I think one of the greatest teachings was how everything is interconnected and how the movement of our lives toward a transition can be seen all around us. The other thing I told Anna that is very, very important is even though we are in this critical time with her health on the edge there is still this magic. As His Holiness said, it is sad when there is illness but there are so many facets to look at in one's life and find what to be grateful for and what is truly beautiful. This experience is a bit of everything. We experience danger, fear, hope, magic, sadness, laughter, love, friendship, loss, pain, confusion and clarity of thought.

When you have serious illness threatening your life you are challenged. When you are the mother of a child turned adult who has fought disease all her life with you always at her side you are challenged. When the edge of the precipice is dangerously under your feet and the time comes after so many years of sickness and care giving and you are so very tired of it all, you begin to hear the ancients in your bones. They begin to sing to you and beckon you to listen deeper and deeper. The ancients know how you feel. They are the ones who through all the ages of time have fought illness and loved and cared and made beds and cooked soup and held hands.

My experience meeting the Dalai Lama yesterday helped me to hear these ancients and the "mothers of all time" more clearly. Being in his presence and touching his hand, I heard them sing to me through my bones. It is a song of longing and a song of sorrow with a sweetness that lulls you into a peaceful acceptance of what is. The song wraps you in wise threads that strum a familiar human melody about a path of understanding. All you need is to listen.

Touching His Holiness

It is the ancient place where the earth beckons us
It overflows with an ancient ooze
It is the light
It is the heat from the center
It is the ancient place of the mothers of all time
Lift the boulder that hides the way
Lighten the boulder that resides in me
Lift the burden in my bones
Release this tight hold I have on the edge of the precipice, fearing our slip
Let us drop, let me feel the release
No fear, there is nothing to hold on to
Let me travel deep into this core where the spirit heart is beating, never stopping
The drum beat of the earth mother sounding her cry
Where the song of the ancients is humming
Melt away, melt away this burden
Incinerate all vestiges of restraint, all chains that bind me to a place of unbecoming
Let me burst forth with a newness that knows this song of the ancients
And the mothers of all time
Deep in my bones
Reaching your hand to me, reaching my hand to you
All benefits must forever benefit all