the splendor

What if...
What if no soul on earth is allowed to remain innocent forever?
What if all souls on earth will be broken? Open.
What if somewhere in life we become like an earth
that once yielded to anything that touched it,
but now, through some sudden twist of fate,
we are closed over and become hardened by grief’s hammer?
What if we are now considered wasteland, even by our own sights?

And what if soul was buried beneath that hard chitin?
What if all was not lost,
but only seemed so...
and was somehow meant to seem so for a time?
What if we all walk dead,
but the time of Return is coming?
What if incubation can only occur in darkness?
What if hope and new life that truly endure
are not born from airy happiness,
but from black dirt grief?
What if we are in the eternal cycle of life/death/life,
‘a night between two days,’ that teaches us?
What if we either learn this and die in order
to lean against the cheek of something, someone Greater,
or else refuse to learn from this season in hell
and thereby die to life forever whilst we are still alive?

And if no one comes to break the earth open again?
What if no one misses the soul in all things,
or else pretends life can exist without the creative twin
born into each of us?
What if thereby the soul could never rise again,
because no one came seeking it,
because none gave themselves
to the hard work of hauling, lifting, heaving,
the dragging, shaping and best guessing
about what might be needed next--
without ever knowing for certain beforehand--
but often enough, trusting spirit,
and being en puente, exactly right
about what is needed exactly right now.

What if even one person remembered
how to open the earth again?
And what if even one person remembered the soul by name?
And what if even one person came seeking
that which all others had given up on...?
What if even one person remembered
that under the hard earth in the darkest time,
new life is ever growing its hands, its feet, its eyes, its voice,
readying to be born again,
needing only one thing...

To be named.
To be called by name,
to be looked for,
received,
cared for with infinite tenderness.
To be protected with the strength of everything
that is wild of mind and deep of courage bones.

You’d like to know the name, the exact name
to call true life back again?
What is the one thing within your soul that can never die?
That is the name.

clarissa pinkola estés, del poema “the splendor”