Surrender with a Sighpart IV

It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it." Mary Oliver Female Irish Names

DAMHNAIT: "Little fawn." Irish/Gaelic name composed of the word damh "fawn" and a ... DERVLA: Irish form of Gaelic Deirbhile, meaning "daughter of a poet. ...

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be ~ Lao Tzu

He froze in his tracks. Walking down from the

Unknown Mountains he stopped at a bend in the trail and

looked out over the valley. The sun was setting on the hills

in the west with the last light glowing over the houses below.

Smoke from hearth fires, rooms with lanterns burning inside,

families finishing dinner getting ready for the night’s rest.

Late afternoon light casting long shadows like boney fingers

pointing a farewell. The path marked with large worn granite

stones with each stone hand hewn and placed as a tread along

the circuitous pathway from the Unknown Mountaintop.

Each stone weighing far more than three men could lift. The

mountaintop loomed high above him. He could see the peak

where he had been and then in an instant it was covered in

cloud and wispy twirling fog and he wondered if he’d seen it

at all.

His home was down there somewhere— his family waiting

for him. The young man’s head still swam with the memory

of the ancient knowledge that had been bestowed as a gift

into his hands, that had touched his heart, had medicated his

wounds, had surrounded his grief with light. The memory of

the elder spirit embracing him and the small phoebe

surrendering secrets— such love, devotion, loyalty,

appreciation, patience, trust. His body was still wracked,

his heart torn out and lost, his cheeks still stained with tears

of appreciation from the visions he had received. He felt

annihilated by the double edge sword— one edge the

piercing ache of grieving agony and the other edge the

blinding, liberating light and memory of the divine wisdom.

The cutting stroke cut only deeper with the intense contrast

the light and the dark held against each other. Standing there,

his life felt tenuous, a big grey ball of emptiness and

confusion.

His stomach dropped, and chills ran down his spine. How

well do you remember your daughter’s smile? How well do

you remember that you will not see it again? Even now, he

was still waiting for her smile, her voice, her recognition to

somehow appear. Waiting. He whispered her name,

wishing she could help him get through this tenuous, grey

moment. The air was still and silent. The sun now behind

the edge of the western mountains and the last light seeped

into the dark web of evening. His breathing became shallow

and panting. His body started shaking. A liquid boiled in

his stomach, churned, and the heat rose through his body and

into his limbs. Numbing. The kettle was boiling. A

chemical reaction occurring that emulsified the grey

emptiness into a roiling ball of pain. An iron rage gathered

like an assaulting army behind his eyes and the flames of

their anger scorched his forehead. He wanted to torch the

entire valley with himself in the middle of it. Send down

tons of water and wash it all away.

He reached down upon the trail and tore up a large stone like

he was pulling up a root from his garden. With some kind of

super human strength lifted it, twice his weight, over his head

and with both arms and with a cry tossed it over the edge.

The roar of his voice tore apart the silence of the valley like

an avalanche of raw chaotic energy. The granite boulder

tumbled down the hill— thrashing through the brush, over

knoll and plants, over small insects and burrowing animals,

over grass and newly formed flowers. The rock bounced off

a young oak tree and a startled fawn ran from its nesting

place and sprung into the air like coiled spring shooting a doll

into the air.

Without thought or meditation, but with some estranged

primal instinct that tore through his body, he pulled out his

bow and released the arrow into the air with its course

determined by the insanity and delusion of the rage that was

shattering that moment. Not a true path, the arrow landed in

the deer’s shank. The rock was now on its ordained path

downward, thrashing through the crumpled brush and landed

in the river below with a cacophonous splash.

The small deer slowly raised upon a knee, gathered its senses

and disappeared into the forest with all the speed and strength

its small body had left for the survival of its species.

The moment the arrow had left his bow he knew he had

made a terrible mistake. Some mistakes have a place in the

scheme of your life; some leave a terrible scar that changes

the course of history itself. If he had another arrow at that

moment he felt that he could ram it through his own heart.

Instead the grey silence had returned. But now it carried

emptiness, it carried anxiety. It was deafening and he felt that

he was going absolutely crazy. He shook off the feeling like

it was a bad smell that he could stuff into his pockets. It was

his duty as a hunter to follow his kill, find it, clean it and

prepare it with proper respect to bring back to his family, to

nourish them in their time of sorrow. Yes, that was his duty.

So he followed the track of blood. The sun had set and it had

become dark. There was no moon and the only light was that

from a few early stars. The blood was luminescent, but the

cold and dark deterred his search.

He had become lost from the mountain path. He felt

delirious, tripped and fell headlong down the same hideous

route his boulder had taken. He gashed his head, twisted his

ankle, scraped his arm, broke his ribs and then like that stone,

landed in the water. The bruises he inflicted upon himself

were nothing compared to the bruises that had now been

brandished upon the delicate surface of the hillside.

Desolate and discouraged he walked through town looking at

the small homes with their soft lights and soft lives glowing

in the background. His body torn, his heart shattered, his

pride abused, his frustration vibrating and his shame trailing

him as if it were the dark shadow of the fawn’s blood. All of

this he stuffed into his pockets as he walked through the

town. When he arrived home it was close to midnight. The

family sound asleep. His wife rose from her bed at the

sound of his limping footsteps. She also had not slept in

days and had laid awake waiting, wondering, where he had

gone. Her sadness for her daughter was like removing the

blood from her body, the air from her lungs. She cried so

hard that she’d scared herself and she’d cry again. An

endless cycle.

She was so relieved that he was back, finally, but what came

from her lips were the words, “Where the hell have you

been?” A tirade of emotions were set loose about how they

were suffering, and lost and hungry and confused and where

the hell had he been when they needed him, and look at

himself, dirty, wet, bruised, bleeding. “Your drunk and no

good, you’ve always been no good.” Her tears streaming

like a marching army and they were attacking. She meant not

a word of it, her emotions being far stronger than her sanity.

What he wanted to say was— “My dearest love, I am so

sorry I’ve been gone. I was lost without you. I was blind

and was led to a mountaintop. I was held in the arms of a

wise old woman who knew all the answers by asking the

important questions. I cried. Things became clear. But

returning home I became confused again, my anger, my grief,

my wounds, overwhelmed me and I shot an innocent fawn.

I love you, will you help me? Can I help you? We are meant

to do this together.” But what he said was: “I’m tired, let’s

talk in the morning.” His wife too distraught to care let her

anger collapse like a deflated balloon and turned to sleep. He

sighed, the air of a thousand lifetimes escaping his lungs, got

into his bed— the soldier limping back from the mythical

battle, returning unwanted and alone. And that was the last

they spoke of it.

The seasons passed and winter arrived with its first rains.

There was no time that it became easier, sometimes duller,

sometimes for a moment forgotten as he trudged in his daily

duties. It was a year of firsts. His children went back to

their schools; his wife still wore black but slowly moved into

the everyday pace of things. There was a shroud that hung

over everything they did. Their daughter was missed beyond

words and words for it no longer had meaning. By now the

village had cooked their meals, had held their vigils, had sang

their songs, had said their condolence, and now had gone

back to attend their families and their own tribulations and

lives. Did they judge him for her death, did they judge him

for not grieving enough, for too much? Did they judge him

for the confusion that he now brought with him wherever he

went? Did people actually walk to the other side of the street

when they saw him approach?

He had never spoke to his wife or his family about his

mountaintop visions, the old woman, or the small phoebe.

By keeping something so important a secret, by keeping his

feelings hidden inside his shell something shifted and became

sideways. The first few weeks he had searched for the

injured fawn, had left daily to find a sign of it. By now he

imagined that a cougar had found the injured deer and had

made an evening meal of it and so he never went back. His

ability to hunt had never been so compromised. These were

hard times, everyone in the village suffered, animals were

scarce, crops were thin, weather was unpredictable, and his

sense of rhythm and feelings were off. He was left to trap

small game, rodents and birds. Something gnawed inside his

stomach, a vague knowledge of self-incrimination haunted

his spirit, seeped into his daily life. He constantly

daydreamed of that hilltop. Held onto his secret with a

primal necessity of survival. Although her bones were

ancient, her hair thin and white, her skin wrinkled and saggy

she slowly transformed in his mind and became the idealized

feminine dream of love, truth and beauty. He tortured

himself with a relentless idolization.

His romanticized memory turned into longing for something

he could not reach and so he reached for nothing— he and

his wife drifted apart. They found it easy to blame their

sadness, their confusion; they found it easy to use the lack of

intimacy created from the exhaustion of their grief, their

daughter’s death; they found it easy to use the complexities

of healing their family and the fear of survival when

prosperity seemed so vulnerable for the reasons they were

drifting apart. They slept nightly in their separate worlds.

And the dark winter nights and the strange weather

continued.

On the hillside something else was occurring. The granite

trail to the mountaintop was changing. The stone that had

been removed opened a space for water to course through.

As the water changed direction it found the scar that he and

his rolling stone had created. The water following its new

course dislodged more stones from the path and the scar

became deeper. Plants were uprooted, small families of

rodents and nests of insects were destroyed, small trees with

honeybees were extricated and washed down the slope.

Suddenly the delicate balance of the pristine hillside and all

its abundance had been tilted from its natural axis and the

water rushed into a gorge 10 feet deep one day and then 20

feet wide the next. Rocks rolled into the river along with

trees. Fish were trapped; otters and beavers were maimed.

A dam of debris blocked the runoff and a lake began to form

and smothered more land and animals under its wet blanket.

Enough water rising to wage a war of nature against man

where man stood no chance of survival.

His life seemed to be going through the motions of living.

His wife also was suffering from the wounds that life had

thrown upon them but he had lost his patience with her

sorrow. She could cry, why couldn’t he? He had seen truth

and beauty on that mountaintop and all this was so dismal in

comparison. He felt unloved, but more—an undefined

anxiety beset against him by injuring the deer, damaging that

moment; transforming everything that was given to him as

sacred into a feeling of profane. Perhaps he was to blame for

his daughter’s death. Perhaps that was what everyone was

thinking behind his back. His wife and children, did they

think that, his friends, the village? Did his family really

need him, love him. Did he even deserve their love?

He slept little and tried not be preoccupied with such painful

considerations. But this night he had a dream that awoke

him in the night. He saw himself hurling the rock and the

fawn leaping into the air. The fawn and he locked eyes again

and this time he felt the tip of the arrow enter his chest. He

tried to run for safety but found the trail falling apart under

his feet, he stumbled and saw the granite trail now awash as a

raging torrent with treacherous waterfalls and jagged rocks.

There was blood on his hands and wherever he looked he

saw his handprints on everything. He saw the huge reservoir

of mucky water held together with nothing but twigs the size

of toothpicks that seemed logically impossible. Destruction

Looming. The world rushing towards him. The eyes of the

fawn still upon him he followed it to a clearing. A field. His

daughter’s voice whispered:

Out beyond ideas

Of wrong doing and right doing

There is a field

I’ll meet you there*

And then everything slowed down. As if he were walking

onto a magical stage. It was nighttime yet a strange light

emitted from the trees. There was music coming from

somewhere, a low hint of a quietly plucked string instrument

with someone humming. He could smell cinnamon and

chamomile. There was a red lantern hanging from a leafless

tree in winter form. It was dark but there was light and he

could see something moving, dancing, skating. It was his

daughter. The first time he had seen her in a dream and he

watched her ice-skating on thin ice that seemed to hover like

a haze over the meadow.

*poem by Rumi

She was beautiful and magnificent in just the way she was in

his life— tall and present, smiling and radiant, laughing and

happy, wise and joyful, dancing and out of control with

laughter. Her skating was spinning, turning, small awkward

leaps, graceful and light, but also always on the verge of

falling. A fatherly concern ran through his body. She was

going to fall. He ran towards her. A shift in the dream and

he recognized his family there also watching her reckless

skating. Bring a chair he shouted to his children.

“Daughter sit! You are going to hurt yourself.” He

was holding the leather-laced boot with its sharpened blade

on its sole. “This is the problem, we need to take off these

contraptions.” And he tenderly knelt in front of her and held

her leg in his lap and slowly removed the shoes. He held her

foot in his hand. He looked up to her. She was smiling at

him— benevolent, not saying a word. Every feature in

perfect detail. Her white foot in his hand and then it came

over him in a wave of reality. This has to be a dream— my

daughter is gone!

And he awoke sitting up, his arms still in the position as if

her were holding something in his hands. He knew that

field. He knew that trail. He knew that river. He knew that

deer. He knew that foot. So he put on his shoes.

“Where are you going, it’s the middle of the night?”

his wife asked. Her voice was sleepy and sweet. Even with

the strangeness of him leaving at this weird hour she was

concerned for him. He stroked her head, feeling an immense

love well up in him.

“I have to take care of something. I’ll be back soon,”

“Be careful,” and she closed her eyes.

The night was dark and he had thought to bring a lantern. As

he got to the forest the lantern was only making it more

difficult to see. He blew it out. The night washed around

him like ink in a bottle. Voices were behind him.

“Dad we can’t see.” He turned and was surprised to

see his sons, his daughter and his wife following him and

behind them other voices in the night. “We were concerned,”

was all they said.

“Walk carefully, feel the earth below your shoes. Let

your eyes adjust to the light in the trees,” he said. “I know

where we are going”

The trail soon became lit by a dim glow. He walked

faster and the light glowed brighter.

They arrived at the field the same as in the dream.

The leafless tree there and in it the red lantern. The wounded

deer arrived in the meadow again looking him in the eye and

lay down below the tree. The field again washed in a light as

if it were stage directed and lit from the heavens. He walked

forward. The ancient woman was there carrying a white flag

and kneeling before the little fawn. Her eyes met his and

stared deep into his body, mind and spirit. Even though it

was night, it seemed like there were bees flying around her

head.

As she spoke, her words went through him like a wind in the

trees, his skin felt pricked, the hair on his arms electrified,

body shaking like a leaf. He watched his family and they

also were standing there watching the scene blow through

them like a breath from somewhere unfathomable

and the things you once loved, living only in flickers, this small fawn with bones and hair and teeth rattling its tiny dark frame and with a sigh I surrender and even still, we die

She spoke in whispers but there were no mistaking her

words. “All this comes and moves and grows and falls and

settles. It comes in myriad of ways and forms. Think of the

sun crossing the sky, its daily charge across the line above

your heads. Think of the moon rising in its forms and how

the patterns also move across your life. You live in a

multiplicity of worlds. They move through you. You must

listen to this”

The family settled in to listen closer

“I want you to say this with me: ‘Divine Archangels and

Guardian Angels, we are here to ask for your assistance and

know that our words, forms, thoughts and inspirations are

being heard and manifesting into this or something better for

us now in a completely satisfying and harmonious way for

the highest good of all. I ask for your assistance in healing

our wounds, clearing our minds, and showing us a path with

divine intentions.’”

Perhaps it was already happening, or perhaps it was the

moment, but the darkness of night had transformed with a

translucent earthy light so that you were able to see the

outline of the forest around them. More bees flew around

her head.

She reaches down and stroked the bleeding fawn and began

to speak to it:

“What I am holding here is not the innocence you shot, this is

not your daughter in my arms, it is you that I am holding. It

is your heart that flickers towards death; it is your wound that

is bleeding in my hands.

It is you that is dying and living in this moment.”

“I know the pain that is flowing from your heart, the

confusion, the agony, the hole in your being, but I see this

also— it has always been there. It has been there longer than

you can remember, even longer than this life. We can hold

these things for lifetimes. The grief you feel from your

daughter being swept away from that cliff is the deepest cut

of all; yet it still another cut from the sword that slices over

the open wound in your chest. It is also the cut that can set

you free. Someday, you will understand her gift. But first

you must surrender the wound. You must believe that this

blood is your life and your death and you choose life even

though death will always choose you. It is all occurs in the

blink of an eye. A moment caught between the space

between time. But you must choose and you must surrender

and it must come with the softest of breaths, the calmest sigh

from your body as you sit in this field. Surrender with a sigh

all that is hindering you. Surrender with a sigh that which

slices your heart. Surrender with a sigh that which denies

you from your spirit’s love and joy. “

Head bowed. “Surrender with a sigh,” he whispered.

“Understand that this is not the surrender of your warrior

spirit, this is not the surrender to the foes that march upon

your fields, or threaten your family. You stand with your

feet on the ground like the deep-rooted trees that withstand

devastation and floods and you protect, provide, teach, and

heal. You build and then you re-build. You give strength

and prosperity to your family. This is the law of the land.

You will be a force to be reckoned with. But you must stand

in this field of truth and you must empty your pockets of the

things you’ve hidden and repair this path you have altered

and rebuild the sanctity of this pristine habitat.”

He felt the words like a judgment and his heart sank. He

suddenly felt condemned and wondered how his family

could still love him. “Surrender with a sigh,” he said.

“Judgment is the arrow that enters your heart. It is the same

as your arrow that fell this fawn and as you know, they

always fly from untrue hands. These arrows contain no truth

in their aim, they arrive from scarred fields and decimated

histories. Not feeling loved is impossible as this light in the

trees is always around you and as it shines through you, it

shines from you. There is no shame in knowing this, in

believing this, in writing this, in singing this, in teaching this

to your children. It is shame when you don’t.

“Understand that the wound bleeding in your chest is from

your arrow dipped in the poison of shame, and anger, and

confusion, and doubt and judgment and fear.

Surrender the wound back; give the arrow back!

Close your eyes, plant your feet, breath out— this will

happen.”

It was cold, but her words hypnotized him. A bee landed on

his head. He did not move. “Surrender with a sigh,” he said.

“In this cold night air lit by the light in the trees— find your

family, see them and look into their hearts. See for the first

time the wounds that they hold there. And behind them, see

their friends and your friends and their friends and see how

their hearts are scarred and how their wounds have made

them. See what suffering we all carry. The world will

appear differently at this point. The lines between truth and

deception will become self evident. This crooked, poisoned

arrow must be removed from your heart.

Surrender with a sigh, he said

See the eyes of your family behind you. See how they love

you. See how they need you. You heal your wound by

seeing, understanding, their wounds. They heal their

wounds, by seeing how you have healed yours. This is not

about the words I am saying— it is about the world that you

are living and how you are living it.

Her voice echoed in the field. The sun hit the tree and shafts

of light could be seen like rays from the heavens, like visible

fingers waving her flag. The bees circled. Surrender with a

sigh.

“These wounds are healed and still we die. Death is the

moment of truth. It all passes in a flicker of light. There is

no choice but to live and love in line with the earth, with your

family, with truth and light. Live now.”

“The things you once loved,

living only in flickers

This small fawn, with bones and hair and teeth

Rattling its tiny dark frame

And with a sigh I surrender

And even still

We die

The sun for a moment blinded his eye and in the glare he saw

his daughter. And like the dream she was spinning in the air.

He could hear the music of strings. He could see the flicker

of white hummingbirds and iridescent dragonflies around

her. Everyone could see her like an angel. The gift had

returned.

In that moment the small fawn sighed its last breath.

In that moment he felt his mind, body and spirit clear.

In that moment the bee stung his forehead. In that moment

he understood the destruction and the necessary repair of the

path set in front of him.

In that moment the ground trembled.

In that moment a large roar deafened their ears.

In that moment the temporal dam holding back the brown

waters from the erosion broke loose.

In that moment he remembered, waters rising, the light in the

trees, and then surrendered with a sigh.

In that moment the community of villagers were safe on the

high field looking down upon their threatened homes.

In that moment the winds came again. In that moment rays

of light exploded onto the stage like bolts of lightening.

In that moment he felt his daughter holding his hand and each

person who loved her, holding their hands.

In that moment they all wept together.

And Surrendered with a sigh.

Surrender with a Sigh