Pilgrimage

The Truelove

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on the grey stones

to the shore of the baying seals,

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water,

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them,

and how we are all

waiting for that

abrupt waking,

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly,

so Biblically,

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love,

so that when

we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and everything confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don’t

because finally

after all this struggle

and all these years,

you don’t want to any more,

you’ve simply had enough

of drowning

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness,

however fluid and however

dangerous, to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

David Whyte from “The House of Belonging”

Copyright 2006, Many Rivers Press

He says to her, “You are safe.” She says to him, “You're not alone.”

Even at the outset, I was aware it was about much more than him. And as each wave of grief and its accompanying emotional release moves through me, it becomes more and more clear. Though I do love and grieve him, this is really, of course, about me. It is, indeed, about the deepest and most essential aspects of me.

It's about fully reclaiming, welcoming, accepting and adoring my heart, my power, my wisdom...my life. It is about making choices by, and for, myself. 


It is about healing ancient, mirroring wounds. About healing these wounds without shying away from what hurts so deeply. Healing these wounds without leaving behind what was so wonderfully good.

It's about the union of the lovers within me, my sacred marriage of feminine and masculine, the balance between my yin and my yang. It's about the relationship I hold inside me, that draws to me the reflection of its most current form.

So I made a pilgrimage to my homeland. I made a pilgrimage to him. I went to see and to be seen. I went to hear and to be heard. I went to share gratitude for the gifts that we had made by being together; as well as the gifts we had made in our coming apart.  I give thanks for the time, the grace, the privilege of these moments of presence, together.

And days within my return, I made yet another important pilgrimage...this time to the man who had come before.  He lovingly helped me connect some of the dots in these patterns. I now see in both these men, whom I still so deeply love, my same internal dynamic, yet acted out in differing ways.

When we had come to the crossroads which asked us to deepen and grow together, these men chose to make -- what felt to me -- a 180-degree about-face.  Then with hardly a breath, they turned into the arms of women as different as night and day from me. And though it’s not mine to really know for them, I do wonder if perhaps these women felt safe? And in that, these men no longer felt alone?

I wonder because I see that, for me, in these particular crossroads, with their turning away I held evermore tightly to their hearts, which I had believed were my shelter. I was wanting, at last, to feel safe. I was wanting, finally, to not be alone.

Inside you there is a Truelove, the one and only that is rightly your own. When you claim and love in fullness your one true life and all you truly are, you love yourself in the way you most want to be loved.

With this profound insight, I now find my inner lovers dancing a circle inside me.  Wanting to end this impasse and willing to welcome the one Truelove. Each wanting. Each willing. Each, yet grieving the ancient wounds and patterns that have held them apart for so long.

I pray for their sacred marriage.  I pray that they find holy consummation. I pray that in time, my inner lovers are found by their mirroring outer reflection... 


The reflection held by a man who meets my courage and vulnerability; a man who knows deeply in his soul that with me, he is safe; a man who knows deeply in his soul that with me, he need not walk alone.  


At the crossroads, we will hold hands together, each choosing to deepen and grow.  And I am safe. And I don't need to be alone.