Wellbeing Is Wanting To Be Remembered

Part 1: There Was a Time

Elder: Wake up, wake up.

It was just a dream!

Dry those tears.

Look around.

We are here.

The trees, the river,

The wolves, our kin.

Child: But there was this place,

Where we were not we at all.

We were split apart,

Separate shells, separate skins,

Separate houses!

Elder: Oh my!

What a nightmare!

To feel cut off,

From our sacred body.

There, there, we’re here.

Part 2: Forgotten

Forgotten as the day is long,

How we grow together.

Entwined in dirt and spit,

Love like water.

Walking hand in glove,

The sensuous simplicity of

Our forgotten mystery.

All that we conspire together.

Sweet dog sleeping next to me.

There was a time not long ago,

When I barked and moaned,

Like you.

We have forgotten how good it feels to moan…

Part 3: Houses

There’s something about these houses.

Little universes unto themselves.

These places we build so pridefully.

Look at me, special, special me,

In my house, with my things.

Every creature comfort,

A private sanctuary.

A glorious place to die alone.

Part 4: Something Happens

And then something happens.

It could be watching the majesty

Of death unfolding before our eyes.

Could be the medicine of remembrance,

Burning off our stories and our shame.

Could be despair, or exaltation,

Pleasure, rematriation.

Or a voice from deep inside your belly,

That whispers, come home…

Part 5: Fighting It

What do you mean, come home?

You just told me that home

Is the box I built to die.

Why would I come home?

Because death, dear one,

Is only as finite

As our desire to love her.

And to hold her as part of us.

To see her not as an ending.

But as a dancer,

In the sacred alchemy of our becoming.

A reminder that the lines we draw,

Around this and that,

You and me, dogs barking,

Children shouting to be seen.

House after house,

Manicured garden just waiting

For a bird to shit on your newly polished SUV,

We drew these lines to forget

Just how close we are.

So go on, pout and scream.

Get it out. This is hard.

Hard to remember that we helped

Lay the bricks of our captivity,

Or, at least, forgot that bricks can break.

Part 6: From the Rubble

The ecstasy of the sledgehammer

Makes the line between pleasure and pain

Even more opaque.

It is an ending of disillusion,

Rife with warm confusion.

There is, of course, profusion.

Now that love is free.

And from the rubble,

That voice, which called you

Speaks again:

Come home to us, come home…

This time, your house freshly broken,

Your eyes wide open.

You walk to her stripped bare.

Part 7: Remembering

The amazing thing

Is that as soon as you embrace,

All is made clear.

As the rubble turns to golden light,

Bodies collide and reunite.

And you forget that you forgot to remember.

And from the remembrance rises

A light so bright, a pulse so strong,

A love so alluring,

That everything that you called you,

And your home, and your dog,

And your mind is shattered.

Into the unbearable lightness of being.

This which can not, and this,

Which will never be,

Broken.

Part 8: Wellbeing is Wanting to be Remembered

Let me not be overly academic,

But to say, wellbeing is simply

Dissolving any lingering illusion

That we are anything but one.

So when I say that

Wellbeing is wanting to be remembered

What I mean is purely that

The sanctity of unity

Is baked into the bricks

That form our homes.

Baked into the fibers of our bones.

Baked into the seedlings,

Waiting to invade our hearts.

Wellbeing is who we are.

So whenever the echo stirs

Our soul’s direction

Back to divine interconnection.

The lights will turn on again,

Never to remember

That we forgot to glow.