Feeling Myself Being Born

It started with Mary Ann Beil at brunch yesterday. It had been a couple of months since we had seen one another so we rushed to catch each other up as good friends do. Or Anam Cara, which is galic for "soul friend. Mary Ann has become a devotee of John O'Donahue, an Irish poet and philosopher.

She also came bearing gifts as she is prone to do. I have a lot of stuff that Mary Ann has given me over the years. A giant iron cross hangs downstairs in the apartment. Dozens of books. An ornate knitted cross of gold that hangs from the Bible that my grandfather gave me.

This time she reaches into her oversized bag that is full of books, her pocket book, notepads, pens and letters...probably a type writer and a sewing machine too. She rumbles around in it for a moment then pulls out two small pages, tied together with a ribbon with an Eagle's feather affixed to it. Mary Ann believes that her symbol is the Eagle and who can argue with her? The woman soars.

"Promise me this," she said as she handed it to me. "This is to be read aloud, with your first glass of wine. Read it slow and thoughtfully. Then pour another glass and think about what you have read."

I nodded my head as I took the gift.

"Micheal!" she scolded, snatching it back, "Promise me."

Good friends know one another. I have a tendency to rush. My Type-A mind works quickly and I gobble it in and rarely savor.

"I promise," I said. And for once I didn't lie to her.

After a long and grueling day, I got home and poured myself a glass and went to my beloved back deck propping my bare feet on the rail, and read it aloud.

The Prayer for the Interim Time.

"You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld."

It got my attention. I took a sip and kept reading. Aloud.

"As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might become free
From all that you have outgrown."

"Shit," I say to myself out loud, "how does Mary Ann know how to do this?" I kept reading. Aloud.

"What is being tranfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new..."

I pondered the words for a long time. Then Goddess was licking my thigh and I had promised to toast my cousin Rick whose funeral I had conducted earlier in the day. So we made our way to Shirely's and this epiphany appeared. It was actually Shirely!

So we drug chairs to the end of the sad little holy dock in the middle of the majestic marsh and we talked about a lot of things.

"You are different you know," she mused at one point. "Over the past couple of years you were wrapped tight and you drug yourself around. You fidgeted. Now your eyes are bluer. You face is softer. Your laugh has meaning. You seem to be enjoying what is around you. You seem to be enjoying you."

How does one answer?

I looked at the beauty of the marsh and wiped the moisture from my eyes. And I thought of the prayer that I had just prayed aloud.

"What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn."

And as Goddess and I walked back home, I could feel myself being born.