Day 29: The Crack in Everything
- Jay Berghuis
- Sep 25, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 27, 2024
It’s the last morning of our retreat. We had a special celebration of joy last evening – dancing to drumbeats and singing here in the zendo.
A song captured by our two songster women seemed to hold the essence of how the Light had been entering all week: Forget your Perfect Offering - “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the Light gets in.”
It was a fiery night of purposeful gratitude and celebration. At one point Jade and I were sitting outside the circle while everyone else was up and moving to the beat, her knee hurt and my fractured legs not yet dancing again. It felt weirdly right, as elders, to be ‘sitting’ in our place, holding space for the community to dance in youthful vigor.
YES - It’s time for true elders to take our place, sitting still and calling from ‘the gates’ of our communities. I’ve been living with this word ElderSoul for the past 5 years. Listening to wise guides like Parker Palmer, Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, Richard Rohr, and Bill Plotkin who keep reminding us that we live in an adolescent culture where most of us as humans have barely moved from childhood through to adolescence, least of all into mature adulthood. We certainly can’t understand the role and place of elders when there are so few elders to follow.
Sitting there reminded me of the wailing cry in Lamentations 5:14 – “The city gate is empty of wise elders. Music from the young is heard no more.”
To move as SoulFire and live from the deepest connection of body, soul, and spirit is not about age, but about life stages and individual development - about the passages and darker portals of an inner journey where we tap into the fire of all our birthright gifts. As communities, we need to be listening to the soul music of young and old elders!
During this last morning together we talk about how we each have been cracked open, how the Light has got in and how we are taking that paradoxical journey back into our communities. We invite our youthful visionary selves at 35, 49, or 75-years-old to have a conversation with our buried elder souls and let the sacred fire of Mystery guide us into our deepest dreams and visions and songs for life in our particular stage of life.
The power of soul journey has cracked me open again in this wild community of hungry human souls and wild earth-beings.
I too have been on retreat.
“First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice”
Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.
What has your inner teacher been saying to you recently?
Where and with whom do you find help on your journey toward an undivided life in this multi-faceted community called Earth?
You too, were most certainly on retreat...such a privilege to hold all these hands.