Searching for God Like a Man with his Hair on Fire Searches for Water.

I awoke this morning with a heavy, achy heart — sad and a bit tenderoonie.

So instead of instantly going into my usual fix-it, let’s-get-happy-as-soon-as-possible mode, I made the the conscious decision to just sit with it.

I am trying to be more patient with and kind to myself these days. I wanted to wait on my heart to tell me its story the same way I would sit and wait with a sad friend — to simply be present, to be there as the container—into which my heart could pour itself.

So I have been still all day, listening, showing my respect and admiration for such a brave, strong, sensitive heart—moving carefully and slowly. It felt like a kind of sitting shiva for my own heart.

And my heart has been telling me lovely, sad stories of longing and belonging all day—stories of past failures, mistakes and lost loves. Stories of triumph and gladness—like the day my daughter was born onto the Planet—not crying, but instead looking up at us so solemnly serious. So fresh from the the other side that perhaps she was surprised to be inside a tiny body again.

My heart tells me a story of longing to belong, another story of desiring independence and strength — to be alone, stories so sweet and tender that I have been in tears all day at the sweetness and vulnerability of them.

It tells me the story of longing, desiring my permission, to go ahead, and in solitude, to search for God like a man with his hair on fire searches for water (or maybe like a woman with her hair on fire searches for water, b/c the search would not be the same) — the longing for the Beloved — the ache to once again meet and merge with the Divine One and surrender to Her/Him, to spend our (my heart and I) days in mindful meditation and prayer, always seeking higher venues for the heart to explore.

Locked in acquiescent physical solitude to achieve spiritual union.

It also tells me stories of desiring union with the physical, of blood pounding through veins and arteries, driving breath and voice up and out to reach the gods and goddesses in their far and away thrones in the sky. It speaks of hair flying, sun-on-skin days of running breakneck through life, laughing as loudly and as often as possible—crying and wailing at death—shouting and singing at birth. It yelps of tears, skin, belly-to-belly and “slow, long, deep, wet kisses that last three days.” It whispers of sweat, salty sweet, cooling on brown skin.

Locked in acquiescent spiritual solitude to achieve physical union.

My heart is not broken—not even breaking open. Instead it is swelling, overflowing — full of life, full of tears, full of pain, full of love and knowing. It is full of choices, voices, longing, the past, all possible futures, right now.

And instead of quieting my heart, instead of trying to muffle the sound and pretend that I am well enough, pretend that I am not in pain, pretend that I know what it is that I am “supposed” to do, I am sending out the longing, the uncertainty, the pain, the love, the stories—like the Call, the Beacon.

My heart is that fire upon the hilltop in the dark under the stars, serving as the signal, the lighthouse, pulling to it what it needs, what it desires. I do not pretend to know what will show up from out of the night, drawn to this fire, stepping into the circle of my light.

I fully expect to be surprised.

A version first published at the author’s blog, as Allowing Longing.