While I danced into my fears and through my grief, a sacred space opened within me for new possibilities to birth — while also hearing the words from a previous post flow into my heart. This poem has helped me through my darkness and feels so resonant to re-post today.
In celebration to all who would like to create meaning within the darkness. May it bring comfort during this time of enormous planetary and collective shifts.
Chaos
Chaos is a shaman. She is ageless and walks the earth in worn brown buckskins, a wing of eagle feathers in her hand, and a medicine pouch around her neck that taps against her heart as she moves.
Chaos is blind. She was wounded while playing with a wildcat when she was seven. Though she cannot see in this world, her vision in the otherworld is sharp. Her eyes are tunnels, doorways into lost cathedrals. You will see yourself there, if you’re willing to look.
Being blind taught Chaos to move by feel, trust her instincts, and develop her inner sight. For her, it is always the hour of twilight, that time of passage between worlds, where lines blur, air has texture and tone, and the shape of the self loosens.
If Chaos reaches for your hand, take it. She is an excellent tracker and guide. She will lead you safely through your darkest terrain. She will teach you to navigate by feel. She will ask you to face your demons {I changed this word to “shadows”} and to let go of everything you identify with until all of your masks fall away and burn, and all that remains is life itself, dancing you like a river.
(C) Meredith Heller 2002
Fear’s Fierce Love