THE SONG OF THE BLACK DOG...

I have been trying to reach the Far-Flung Voice all week, and he finally checked in last night. It was great. He made me laugh, and I got to tease him and ask seriously how he is doing -- both things that make me feel like I'm doing some good in the world. He is knee-deep in a messy divorce. WAY ahead of me there.

But the tonic failed to stay with me, and the tears that had hit me in the bathroom returned once I went to bed and for the first time in months I was unable to just go to sleep. We had talked long, perhaps long enough that I just got my "second wind," but that wind brought the baying of the dog back in all its force.

And this is the Song of the Black Dog:

there is no "thing with feathers," and there is no love for you. You turned your back on what you had been given because for some short season it appeared not good enough, and now you get to stew in your own isolated juices. People who love you will be in your life, but your choice has put you beyond their comprehension and beyond their reach.

And whatever it is you are doing that drives other people away is something that is so basic to your nature that you will never let anyone close enough to connect.

This is actually a very old song. I have been told that I make a point of falling for people who are unattainable or who won't respond so that I won't have to take the leap and sink or swim... that avoidance has probably been at the bottom of many if not most of my life decisions from the beginning. And here I thought I was the one who insisted on confronting everything head-on... though on one level, that might almost argue for the opposite being my natural inclination, and the drive to confront being a learned behavior poured like icing over the insufficiency below.

As is usually the case, one can make an equally forceful argument that the desire to confront is the natural state which I learned at great cost to subjugate at work, for instance, but always had to unload somewhere to survive. And that would make the avoidance issue a conundrum. Which, as a human being, I am.

And being one means partaking of the suffering in the world, and I have by-passed most of it for most of my life. Intellectually I know that I am still better off than 99% of the world and that the little cross I have been given to bear, heavily as it weighs upon me, is just one infinitesimal drop in the unending ocean of human suffering -- but it doesn't make that little cross of mine any easier to bear. For me.

Today's event went well enough, and aside from making a complete mess of my mother's kitchen which I then had to clean up before heading home, it also took my mind off my dark companion. But he was close enough on my way there that I almost started to cry in the car. And came close enough again at my mother's sink that I am beginning to think that washing up is part of the problem...

Where there is no "thing with feathers," there is no human life.
Life without hope, like war, is hell.

So, my Advent prayer is this:

O Lord, keep my mouth shut and my mind open. Keep my head small and my heart big. LET NOT THE SWORD OF SCORN DIVIDE.

Give me eyes to see and ears to see where you are coming, and give me the strength to go there to meet you. And if it can happen somewhere along the line, give me a companion to share the road. But most of all, show me the road.

Mark it out in lines of fire, and make each signpost on it hit me like a brick. Because it's dark and my usual trick of navigating by landmarks has failed me. Bear me up and bear me out. Stand by my all brothers and sisters in need, and give them strength -- and hope. And teach me patience. Surely it's not too late for that.

I figure if I can just make Christmas in one piece, things will look up... even without the Silver Fox waiting on the other side...

Hang in there.
I am doing my damnedest, myself.

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