I'm mostly content with sweet, rich memories of what
I experienced in the company of 150 loving, miraculously openhearted fae spirits
three hours southeast of Portland: the languorous hot-spring soaks under stars
I haven't seen blaze so brightly in years; the river's endless rush below the
camp; a steady stream of affectionate touch in passing from men most of whom
I'd only just met, in the dining hall, on paths, in crowded hallways; delicious
surges of infatuation, half a dozen times a day; the mindbending fabulosity of
the Saturday night talent show; dozens of brothers gathered around a bonfire breaking
spontaneously into a chant invoking the Goddess.
But as for the Heart Circle, memory doesn't feel
like enough this morning. I find myself longing to sit daily among companions
who weave a safe, sacred container for one another, to go on living among those
unafraid to access the soft, tender vulnerability that is the working of an enlightened
heart, as Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön reminds us. I want this as an ongoing practice in my life.
When you sit to listen deeply--without
cross-talk, without comment--to the grief, the longings, the pain, and the
aspirations your companions share, your own heart opens in response. You find
yourself awakened from your superficial projections when the man you've spent
two days fantasizing about across a crowded room voices the loss he's suffered;
you rejoice to witness the passion for justice that animates the next man who
speaks. You speak in turn in safety. Your soul begins to mend. In some small
but infinitely precious way, the world begins to mend. And you become part of
its mending.
Just a few hours after I landed back in a world
where such things don't happen every morning, I went yesterday noon to an Ash Wednesday
Eucharist. There was much talk of turning again toward the Source of our being,
of reconnecting with the goodness of who we were created to be. But Lent, for
me, remains the most toxic and problematic season of the Christian liturgical
year. I still hear too much self-loathing in the ancient formulas of penitence,
too much individualistic obsession with getting it right and with how we've
gotten it wrong. Some years I say, only half as a joke, that I plan to give up
church for Lent. What I want instead as a Lenten practice this year is forty
days of heart circles.
