Romancing the Ordinary
Sep. 2nd, 2003 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sun_set_bravelyMy stepmother gave me Sarah Ban Breathnach's book Romancing the Ordinary last Christmas, but I didn't pick it up until this summer and start reading it. (I suddenly feel like I've said all of this before.)
At any rate, this is the first chapter in September. Not everything is applicable. But I was thankful to read it last night in a room that suddenly seemed too big:
The Season of Relinquishment
There is a time, when passing through a light, that you walk in your own shadow.
--Keri Hulmee
The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning believed that her husband, the poet Robert Browning, whom she married when she was forty, had loved her into "full being." For most of my life, I assumed that this sublime sense of completion was only found in Love's reciprocal promise. But the coming of autumn makes me wonder if Loss hasn't also been an attentive suitor. Why? Because it was only during the lonely and bereft times that I finally learned how to love myself; only during the seasons of relinquishment that I could clearly discern between my needs and my wants; only by searching through the rubble of what was missing that I discovered the overlooked; only after sorrow isolated me from the world that I was forced to become a woman of my own devices. But when I did, I began to reach toward an intimacy that I always sought in others. Now I've found it with the least likely person -- myself.
It was extremely comforting to discover that this was always part of the Divine Plan for woman.
In Eve's Diary, as translated "from the original" by Mark Twain, the first female is having a difficult time adjusting to her surroundings. The man, whose soul mate she's meant to be, resents her presence and is doing his best to ignore her. Eve is left to explore Eden on her own, but she's so bewildered by her first loss she doesn't quite know what to do.
Four days into Eden and woman is asking man what she's done wrong.
Well, sometimes there's nothing to do but make the best of it. Eve wanders off by herself and chances upon a beautiful moss-bank where she can sit and put her feet into the water. When she does, she catches her own lovely reflection. Still pining for the sighs wistfully. "but it is something and something is better than utter loneliness."
But then Eve discovers this unexpected Other is responsive to her. "It talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it says 'Do not be down-hearted, you poor friendless girl; I will be your friend,' and 'it is a good friend to me and my only one.'"
Suddenly, a passing cloud blots out her reflection. Eve panics at the thought of losing her only true friend. The man's rejection was one thing, but to lose herself is a despair she cannot even begin to cope with.
Although grief is a universal passage, loss is deeply personal. But we are not meant to bear it alone. The clouds may cast temporary shadows, but your Essensual Self, the companion who has been with you from the beginning, is still patiently waiting for you, like the lovely reflection who comforted Eve.
At any rate, this is the first chapter in September. Not everything is applicable. But I was thankful to read it last night in a room that suddenly seemed too big:
The Season of Relinquishment
There is a time, when passing through a light, that you walk in your own shadow.
--Keri Hulmee
The English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning believed that her husband, the poet Robert Browning, whom she married when she was forty, had loved her into "full being." For most of my life, I assumed that this sublime sense of completion was only found in Love's reciprocal promise. But the coming of autumn makes me wonder if Loss hasn't also been an attentive suitor. Why? Because it was only during the lonely and bereft times that I finally learned how to love myself; only during the seasons of relinquishment that I could clearly discern between my needs and my wants; only by searching through the rubble of what was missing that I discovered the overlooked; only after sorrow isolated me from the world that I was forced to become a woman of my own devices. But when I did, I began to reach toward an intimacy that I always sought in others. Now I've found it with the least likely person -- myself.
It was extremely comforting to discover that this was always part of the Divine Plan for woman.
In Eve's Diary, as translated "from the original" by Mark Twain, the first female is having a difficult time adjusting to her surroundings. The man, whose soul mate she's meant to be, resents her presence and is doing his best to ignore her. Eve is left to explore Eden on her own, but she's so bewildered by her first loss she doesn't quite know what to do.
My first sorrow. Yesterday he avoided me and seemed to wish I would not talk to him. I could not believe it, and thought there was some mistake, for I loved to be with him, and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could feel unkind towards me when I had not done anything? But at last it seemed true, so I went away and sat lonely in the place where I first saw him in the morning that we were made . . . but now it was a mournful place, and every little thing spoke of him, and my heart was very sore. I did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; I had not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and I could not make it out.
But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went to the new shelter which he had built, to ask him what I had done that was wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again; but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow.
Four days into Eden and woman is asking man what she's done wrong.
Well, sometimes there's nothing to do but make the best of it. Eve wanders off by herself and chances upon a beautiful moss-bank where she can sit and put her feet into the water. When she does, she catches her own lovely reflection. Still pining for the sighs wistfully. "but it is something and something is better than utter loneliness."
But then Eve discovers this unexpected Other is responsive to her. "It talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it says 'Do not be down-hearted, you poor friendless girl; I will be your friend,' and 'it is a good friend to me and my only one.'"
Suddenly, a passing cloud blots out her reflection. Eve panics at the thought of losing her only true friend. The man's rejection was one thing, but to lose herself is a despair she cannot even begin to cope with.
She was all I had, and now she is gone! I cannot bear my life any more!. . . and so I hid my face in my hands, and there was no solace for me. [But] when I took them away, after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful and I sprang into her arms! That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was not like this, which was ecstasy. I never doubted her afterwards. Sometimes she stayed away -- maybe an hour, maybe almost the whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy, or she is gone a journey, but she will come." And it was so: she always did. . . Many and many are the visits I have paid her; she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard -- and it is mainly that.
Although grief is a universal passage, loss is deeply personal. But we are not meant to bear it alone. The clouds may cast temporary shadows, but your Essensual Self, the companion who has been with you from the beginning, is still patiently waiting for you, like the lovely reflection who comforted Eve.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 10:32 am (UTC)that the reason we have patriarchal religions is the jealousy
of men(original sin?)because originally there were
priestesses, not priests. just a thought, and not
original, either.~paul
no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 08:47 pm (UTC)