There is living in me a deep yearning. It pulls at me, like the ocean waves dragging back out at low tide. The intensity changes, the force ebbs and flows, but the tide always comes back in and goes back out again. I am not sure quite what the yearning is for, it is a somehow felt sense that there is more than all of this. More than work and play, more than family and obligations, more than creative work, even more than joy. It is a pull equal to the calling of the magnetized lines of the earth that call to the flocks of geese that make there way south in the winter, spilling out in long v shaped formations through the sky overhead. There is something missing, we have lost that which makes us human, I do not know my way home anymore, I do not know if home exists. Not here, not now. How do we make home alive again? How do we learn to become human?

A wise man once told me “hold on to your NO.” This is the “NO” that screams in the night, that this is not the way it all should be, we are built for more than this. We have been robbed. This is the “NO” that echoes in my bones and pulls at my heart like that ebbing tide. People talk all the time, this is wrong, that is wrong, it is all wrong. Hell, I am one of those people….but this “NO” is deeper. This does not speak simply of what is wrong, but of where we went wrong. What befell a people whereby more than half the women take medicine to make their lives palatable? Whereby children are drugged to sit in school all day, forced to ignore the innate wisdom of their own young bodies urge to be free? Oh, wait, there I go again…asking what is wrong, it’s a beginning I will give you that, but a sorely one. My skill at deeper questioning is still a developing one, I am a fledgling, seeking meaning, falling hard onto rough ground.

As Painful as it is to hold this aching longing in me, to feel the resounding NO! that echoes in the air… there is beauty here too. To have this heart that sees the folly of our cultural doctrines and searches desperately for more, is a true gift. If I could not feel the pull, I would not dare to ask the questions, or to embark on the perilous journey of seeing what is hidden, hearing what is silenced, feeling what hurts so deeply. The cult of hope and potential would have me firmly in its grip. As it stands I have found a chink in the armor of this empire, a small fissure in the stone of cultures wall. I can place my finger tip there, and feel a breeze on the other side. The whisper of how it all could be. I have abandoned hope, but I have something much truer, faith. I have faith that we can learn, and unlearn, break down and build up, fetch and carry. Grow a new way of living in right relationship with the wild eyed world we dwell on and in.

I hold my “NO” close to my breast, I hold it like a soft flame, tending it from the wind that blows, like a tiny rabbit, so small yet so strong. My body feels the “NO”  and tells me when I must remember to kindle it alive. When I am torn between ease and rigor, when I might choose the shortest way but the longest is the truer path, when I might say what I do not mean but mean what I do not say. My “NO” beats loudly in my ears and whispers sweetly but urgently…”Don’t go back to sleep….”

Sometimes I do not know where to turn, what comes next, how to proceed or believe. Yet I do feel the silent aching pull of my body, calling for home. I know ways to connect and give. I know the power of 3 breaths in silence before I act. I know that others too feel the call for home, for something more than all this chaos. All these busy days and sleepless nights, torrents of noise and light, the stars hiding their faces behind the glow of cityscapes electric fog. From a 1000 miles away I can feel your hand reaching for mine. I can feel soft soil calling for our feet to bless her with their footprints. I can hear a soft high fiddle that plays as we gather around the fire at night, voices joining with her stringed melody. I know the feeling of your body warm and swaying next to mine, hand in hand. Visions of home calling us. I can taste it on my tongue. I am hungry.