New Life
There’s a crack in the gutter where a flower
grows...reminding me that everything is possible, are words sung by the American poet and musician
Michael Franti, in his song titled Hey,
Hey, Hey. Beauty is more clearly noticed in the barren places; a blast
zone, a body that has lost most of its ability to move, and the gutter where a
flower grows. Beauty is more definable with the backdrop of the mundane, or
even ugly. We can really see it. The soul moves towards darkness, not away from
it. It adores unity and longs for wholeness. Wholeness comes from loving the
darkness; bringing in what was once rejected. Capra says, “Life constantly reaches into novelty.”
(2002, p. 34) The very foundation of who we are, the breath of life running
through every living thing, is creative. It can transform what appears dead,
making it new again. Grace rises and emerges from death, like Lazarus walking out
from the tomb. In his book on beauty, John O’Donohue says, “there are no
guarantees in the kingdom of risk, nature shows us time and again, that it is
precisely at that moment of greatest risk, the moment when everything could be
lost, that the greatest change happens. A new life opens out into a new world
that could not have been dreamed of before this. It is difficult to find the
courage and the vision at the points of deepest wounding to believe that new
risk can take us into new life. But there is no alternative.” (O’Donohue, 2004,
p. 178-9) This is what grace is; the regenerative force, that longs for a new
story. It is the Source that leads us straight into the wounding, where it
assures us, we can find the light.
Comments