September 11th, 2020
It was Christ who taught her how to listen to the heart beat.
Not the Jesus up on the cross.
She climbed up a on a chair in Sunday school when everyone else was in Mass and with her little 7 year old fingers pried his pale bloody body off and stuck him safely in her pocket.
For several Sundays after the kids would ask, “Where did Jesus go?”
Giggling they would whisper under the teacher’s stern eye that had indeed resurrected.
She was pleased by this and so was he.
She went to the woods, found her rock and took him out of her pocket and put him to her heart. That was the first time she really heard him.
“Good one.” He said.
From then on they talked often after mass, the smell of incense wafting as the only thing familiar. “Clearly they were not there. They don’t even have the names right. The men had to eat. They all had wives and kids. The most magical kids! I was one of them right?”
To which he said, “You were there and you were wonderful. You will help for it to come clear. The truth has a way of finding itself home. Like a seed in the ground it takes root when everything is right.
“There was a trick you taught me back then but I can’t remember.” She put her hands to her heart.
He said, “Listen, the truth roots itself between heart beats. It if is not the truth then it can not hold. That is what the quiet space is. It holds the truth. The beating is what pushes out that which is not true. Listen to the space between the beat.”
She closed her eyes and listened with her hands. How easy it was to find. The swish of it opened to a huge chamber where it was all kept. The great light of it invited him in. He entered grateful for the radiant space, like he had been waiting out in the cold.
“I am the light right?”
“Yes,” he said, “I don’t bring it. I help you find it. Remember you can not give someone your light. You can not give someone their truth. You can only help to show them where theirs is.”
She loved knowing this and shared it over dinner. Her parents listened and really considered it but it was the 70’s and not yet time for that.
She sat holding her heart in the emergency room. She had just turned 50 and was waiting on a sort of invisible, timeless line for a MRI.
She could hear her heart beating loud. It was pushing, straining, kicking out of her half truth after half truth. The pressure in her body was constant. She looked down to her swollen hands. She had forgotten for a while but was listening now. It was time. They would think her crazy but it was time and the soil was right and it would stick. It would hold.