Artful Living Blog
Dancing with Breast Cancer, aka Sister Meri
- Created on Thursday, 09 June 2011 19:40
Here's my thought. I see breast cancer as an individual, close-to-the-bone experience. But like all universal stories, its greatest value lies in how it exits its personal door - raw-edged, black swan that it is...
Imagine sitting around the story table, the book group, or whatever safe space we claim for regaling the past and perhaps even engaging in a little revisionist history. And we ponder; how, across time and around the globe, as siblings, we gathered 'round the same dinner table, ate the same mashed potatoes, and shared (or shirked) the same family chores... so how did we (they) all end up sooooo different (aka 'other')? Along the same story line, different thread, there is always one who is golden, one who holds the family pain, on through the labels and archetypes we spend our lives re-telling and re-etching, or scratching out and recreating.
It is my belief that teachings we are faced with have always been here, ready to actualize, sure as an acorn knows it will be an oak tree. Sister Meri was at the table all along. She is an archetype. She is golden AND she is black swan, holding the pain! I just didn't exactly know that my soul was set to learn that particular lesson in that particular way, from that particular perspective. She belongs in my space as a strong component bubbling me up from my geothermal depths to my effervescence essence that courses along on a current of hope. I know this because I recognize the etymology of the word compassion, and I know the path to compassion is not academically accessible; it is absorbed through experience with an other.
So, let's treat her like a sister and enlarge our circle of belonging! She already comes to the gatherings as a discussion point; let's stop relegating her to black sheep and award her honored guest, visiting lecturer status! Let her teach us to dance; or to feel; or to bring us whatever her cell soul seed was intended to bring that can coax us beyond self.
The thought I am working with, same as my work to stop resisting resistance, is to amplify and magnify what she was intended to bring me. Again, I see breast cancer as an individual, close-to-the-bone experience. Its greatest value lies in how it exits its personal door - raw-edged, black swan that it is – enriched with a capacity to re-enter, brilliant, shimmering light white bird, part of a beautifully choreographed company of collective soul.
Dance, Sister Meri, dance!
Gift yourself to the Santa Fe Studio Tour!
