What Strength It Takes To Bear A Slow Untangling
Help me be strong, help me be, help me
I wake up with lyrics on my lips from the distant past. Attention gathers at a cellular level, and there is an impulse to press play on a dusty mixtape.
I do not brace against outgrown words. Every cell in my body is grateful.
An image coalesces…
I am a delicate gold necklace, tangled and unintentionally tied into a knot. I keep trying to die to myself, but the context is all wrong. Something, someone, is untangling me with the fiercest tenderness, slowly loosening constriction. In this spaciousness, I am undefended.
What strength it takes to bear slow untangling.
I walk in the shoes of others’ wisdom—lyrics my heart recognizes, but cannot presently find words for. One song at a time, circulation is being restored.
I drink deeply when this tap is turned on. Attention is different here. Truth slips past defenses. I have a front row seat to inner contradictions and to something else. I sing myself home, over and over again—on walks, on short and long drives, in between Zoom calls, while I do the dishes.
Attention crescendos. Light shines on a few words from a new angle.
Words I have sung hundreds of times ripen and fall from the tree, a subtle synaptic restoration. According to the clock, these moments are inconsequential. In every other way, they are voluminous.
If we require a definition, let us call it knowing: a knowing that is personal, experiential, and tending toward union with that which is known.
-Father Bruno Barnhart on Wisdom
Questions to Ponder…
If time is not linear, is who we are presently singing to ourselves in another dimension?
Are we all perpetually singing in the round?
What songs called to you before you understood the resonance?
Are there brief clock moments that seem incredibly spacious? As you tune into your sense of time, is there a felt sense that wishes to come into expression? What do you know?
My name is Kirsten. I practice spiritual direction online and in person on Vashon Island.
I love the way Rob Bell describes the type of space I hold for others, “A spiritual director is trained to ask you the questions—to help you enter into whatever it is more fully, so that you can begin to discern what Spirit is up to in even this. This chaos, this turmoil, this joy. This challenge. This obstacle. This dark night of the soul.”
If you find resonance here, you can read more about my accompaniment offerings here.
Read More on the Soulspace Blog:
Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul: A Spiritual Director Holds Space for Obscurity
We Are Here
Practicing Presence with Abstract Art
Please Tell Me What To Do: The Gift of Not Receiving What I Thought I Wanted in Spiritual Direction
