It was at one of John Homewood's talks that I first encountered the figure of the cross as a living articulation between our breath and time itself.
The timeline of our lives creates the horizontal axis of the cross, made up – if you jot down the events of your life – of the buzz and chaos, with its joys and trials, of every human’s count of days on earth.
When I inspect my own timeline, I have to admit that it’s a pretty ragged thread of sorrows and misfortunes. Until recently, I was embarrassed by the fact that, in terms of actual incidents, my life seems to be peppered by what most of us would, I guess, call misfortune, bad luck and sorrow. I’ve lost that embarrassment as a result of chronologically listing the basic events of my circumstances, and then reflecting on what endures, as follows.
During a materially comfortable childhood, I witnessed harsh human dissent and loss of self-control as a given.
My family moved to South Africa, where we lived literally on the edge of a military zone called Voortrekkerhoogte (now Thaba Tshwane). The State at that time promoted and defended racist practices by policy, causing my father to declare that he would be quite content if my sisters and I failed Afrikaans at school – that seemed to be the way he felt he could best contribute to the anti-Apartheid struggle. Friends and boyfriends were conscripted and suffered abuse and violence on all levels.
I left home, and experienced armed soldiers searching my room, friends being sjambokked by police, a pregnant lecturer imprisoned without trial. I taught in violent townships, and in tiny sanctuary spaces offered to township children. I lost my sanity, benefited from the balm of therapy.
Mandela was released and the New South Africa came into being.
I married and experienced the gift of motherhood. My husband and I were economically on the margins, however, to save money I did not eat properly, suffered from overwork, broke down and succumbed again to mental illness, from which, again, I managed to recover. My husband was unwilling to continue the marriage and eventually we divorced.
My second marriage gave me deep spiritual fulfilment, my husband and I published many poetry books together, but he was frail, his failing health was ever a shadow over us. Economic pressure was a constant, he carried much debt.
Then my fit, nimble mother suffered a stroke and was consigned to total physical helplessness. My sister lost her sanity, and my beloved husband died.
I published two poetry books solo.
I was required to sell my late husband's house and leave the village that had become my home. At the same time, Trump was making headlines with his tweets.
I was lucky in love and did not have to move alone. Within weeks of our move, Covid and hard lockdown razed human lives and economies. I lost work and marketing opportunities for my new book. Friends and family fell ill.
My father’s memory began to fail and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, requiring me to run my parents’ household and take responsibility for their daily needs and overall care.
War continued to ruin the beauty of the Middle East.
My sister is currently in a mental institution and I am praying constantly for her. My Beloved’s heart has urged him to leave me for crucial time to himself – whether temporarily or forever is uncertain.
Russia has invaded Ukraine and I hear alternatingly tragic and hopeful details of the victims from friends who have connections there.
So much for the horizontal axis of my personal cross in a broad sweep – living such a timeline is great training in patience, I’ll say that much. And patience – please consider this carefully – does not mean simply waiting for undesirable situations to pass. Patience is the active (gracious) carrying of an unwanted load towards its end. It’s notable that, except for love and marriage, motherhood, the recovery from my illnesses, and the activities of teaching and poetry publishing, none of the other events on my timeline were chosen by me! I couldn’t have asked for a better, or harder, school than this life to teach me a little graciousness.
I wonder,
if you were to make a list of events on YOUR timeline, what the ratio of chosen
to unchosen would be. How would you rate YOUR ability to carry unwanted burdens?
♥
Now for the
vertical axis – the one, which, I recall John Homewood observing, you plumb when
you stop focusing on the “school”, that milling chaos called ‘the wheel of life’.
I tried to outline it in poem form –
The vertical axis of my cross
is prayer, my heart –
vessel of joy,
my pen standing up
for me in spite of trouble,
noting my small noticings –
fine sword of God, ensuring anchorage
in places
of peace.
Thus, I write
of deer, of dew, of weather and birds –
they are my breath,
preserving me, wrapped
in Christ’s playful smile,
on my cross.
The loveliest insight, for me, which
the above reflections yield is that my chosen, voluntary WORK – my writing (published
and unpublished) and my visual art – by and large expresses not the
vicissitudes of my timeline, but the spiritual
anchor of my self in the vertical axis. I realise that my life’s work, mainly
my artistic output, has never not been first and foremost a spiritual path and
practice.
All of what I have done and continue to do is subordinate to the naked flame that has steadily been alchemising my soul beyond the edge of time.
♥
As for you – I’d be curious to hear
where you feel the ‘vertical axis’ on your cross breathes most freely.
