Sanctuary

1.1.07

I wake this morning, New Years Day, exhausted from last night's tornado that swept through my being and leaves me shaking. For some reason, whether watching the Wizard of Oz, or from some unconscious year end tally or realizing this is the year I turn 50, I had a major existential breakdown. This year has been filled with changes, in relationsihps, in work, physically and psychically. I have been reading, searching for information right and left, inside and out and last night it hit me. The big question: Who am I? Am I here? Do I matter?

We are advised by counslors and gurus and religions to find and nuture our souls within, to take care of ourselves first and then give the oxygen mask to our loved ones. We are told to look at our own issues, soothe our sorrows and past wounds and not look for answers in relationships. So we address these elemental pains of abandonment or abuse or neglect or just the basic thrust from the womb into the cold bright world with various subtances or activities or years of therapy or prayer or medication.

Yet, who are we but the sum of our relationships? Am I not a wife, a mother, a friend, an educator, a neighbor? Have I not been a daughter, a lover, a seeker, a student? Do I not strive to be better at all of these roles or do I accept my limitations and those of my loved ones and conserve my energy for soul searching and that perfect fifth? What greater pain in the world is there than reaching out to someone you love and finding they are not there? Either dead, un-available, moved on or encased in the armor of their own soul's wounding? This IS our most painful moment. Our never ending quest is to connect honestly and fully with other humans, yet we are advised not to invest too much in the outcome, to ride the waves of our parallel or disparate journeys with a firm grasp on our own tillers. I'm not sure it's possible.

Rilke wrote a poem:

"Occasionally someone rises from evening meal,
Goes outside, and goes, and goes, and goes...
Because somewhere in teh East a Santuary stands.

ANd his children lament as though he had died.

ANd another, who dies within his house,
Remains there, remains amid dishes and glasses,
So that his children must enter the world
In search of that scantuary which he forgot."

I wonder what the East represents here and thought this morning as my own sun rose that perhaps it represents dawn, the new day. Our New Year's icons often include a baby, representing birth, hope, life ahead. In turning to the East, to sanctuary, is our traveller returning to that place of safety, the mother's womb before we greet the day of life? Isn't that what we seek most, the warmth and security of a place that nutures and protects us? Isn't that what we crave in our relationships? Certainly he was not talking about going out on a shopping trip to the Orient? Or was the East for him, Prague born, the seat of civilization, Jerusalem? Again, another symbol of birth, our origins?

This time of year people send out the seasonal cards, best wishes, greetings, poses of a variety of familial or solitary bliss. With the family pet, in front of the tree, on vacation, dressed like elves, in a studio. The camera catches us as we wish to be seen or at least that is our intent in posing, but sometimes it sees something else. Like a clenched fist, or a mis-placed gaze. The red-eye effect brings out teh devil in us. A stray hair that hides a peculiar look. A yearning gesture couched in a certain body placement. Yet, with these imperfections we send them out, these symbols of our connections, our relationships. We want people to know who we are, how we relate, what matters.

Do I matter if I am not important to people? Am I truly here if I leave no footsteps behind? Who am I if not the sum of my relationships?