Splitting Open the Whole World

My Christmas Cactus in the Kitchen Window--Blooming Now.

Photo from 2011.  Light in winter.

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The Telling That Changes Everything XXVII. September 2, 2012

You see, the ecstasy the true self experiences is outside time, and it’s contagious.

–The Telling That Changes Everything II. 

How does one human being help hold back

the woes of desolation and dismay that

descend, despite our best efforts?  By belief

that the More in our human nature’s still 

there, will always be there if we stay 

attuned to that deeper, wiser chord we

have the ears to hear, the vision to 

recognize and obey; that leads us into our 

own imagined promised land either 

before or after we die.  

–The Telling That Changes Everything XVII.

When Susan came to interview me

and pressed me to know where my 

drive came from, I told her it started

early.  By age twenty-seven I knew my

destiny was to do something important.

Vague enough then and sometimes

forgotten–yet, like a hard pebble of

truth inside me, I couldn’t entirely forget.

It kept me on this path I later called

my leyline: doing what I must do,

while I have life and limb.  At age

fifty-four I wanted to fulfill Muriel

Ruykheyser’s dictum: “If one woman

told the whole truth about her life,

the world would split open.”  I worked 

for truth and justice here and abroad, 

wanted people who are different

to overcome their fears and hostilities.

I saw how my words became catalysts

and changed things, though I was often

castigated: “trouble-maker;” hated,

feared, avoided.  I turned to my books:

I’d send their arrows of truth zinging

out into the wider world.  I, a catalyst,

have been giving birth to books, also

catalysts, which carry their passionately

winged words into other minds.  

Some of my arrows may come right

back and wound me.  That’s inevitable

when you once begin the work of

splitting open the whole world.