The Heart & Soul of Depression

In it's most human terms

Depression is essentially

the sheer agony

of living in profound separation
 

from your own innermost light.

copyright 2019 WhisperingBird

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Prometheus Unbound. Invocation of the Muse

Narrator:  Tell me - Oh Muse - how Prometheus was freed from the rock to which he was nailed and chained.   How was the eternal torment of the vulture that fed upon his immortal liver finally brought to an end?

And who was it that released him?   Who would have done such a forbidden thing?  Who would dare to stoke the rage of the almighty Gods and risk losing everything in the world he had to live for?

And what remained of Prometheus when he was finally freed?  How did he manage to sustain himself for the duration of his imprisonment?  How is it possible for the soul to survive the intolerable deprivation of complete immobility for so many thousands of years?

Calliope(Muse of Poetry):  The story of Prometheus's release from his prison atop Mount Cacausus was lost in time.   Two shards of hearsay are all that remain.

The first says that Prometheus bargained with his jailer Zeus and agreed to repent his theft of fire in exchange for freedom.   To seal their agreement, Prometheus was made to wear an exquisitely fashioned ring crafted from the chains that bound him.

In the beginning Prometheus bitterly thanked those who complimented the ring's beauty and fine workmanship until his mounting rage made him prefer to suffer the humiliation in silence.

When this too became unbearable, he opted instead to honestly explain his arrangement with Zeus.   By then however, Prometheus felt himself full up against the walls of his new-found freedom, and cast the ring into the sea - thus returning to suffer anew the torment of rock and vulture.

It is also said that Prometheus underwent a complete metamorphosis.  He hardened, and hardened, and hardened until he became one with the rock to which he was chained.

Narrator:  Prometheus was the keeper of secrets that were precious to Zeus!  How could either of these things have happened to one who held so much power over his tormentor?

Calliope:  Is it enough to hold and guard a secret?   Must one also not choose carefully its moment of revelation?   Isn't it possible for secrets to lose their power over the course of time?

Narrator:  But Prometheus's secrets were prophecies!  Even if he never disclosed them, wouldn't they have come to pass just the same!?

Calliope:  Why do you care to unearth and sun this ancient history?  What would a breathing being of body and soul want with an empty grave of such a long forgotten past?

Narrator:  I have a love for the ancient stories.  And I am moved by what Prometheus suffered.

Calliope:  I sense another connection.   You spoke your first questions to me with an unaffected indignation.   Your voice was broken when it rang in my ears.   Was it your feeling for another's plight that I heard, or the first shattering of your own insufferable silence?

Narrator:  I came here - as did all Poets of ancient times - for Divine inspiration.  Not to surrender my private life to a stranger with whom I have no relationship.

[Calliope's eyes come alight as if gazing for the first time at the wide expanse of a new horizon]
 
Calliope: Yes!!  Surrender to the stranger with whom there is no relationship!

[Calliope retrieves a blank scroll from atop an altar in her temple and sends it unraveling across the floor.  One end of it comes to rest at the feet of the Narrator.  The other disappears into the heart of the temple.]
 
Calliope:  To the right of this scroll are the temple doors through which you entered.   To its left lies the temple heart.  Choose the path that beckons you.



[Silence ensues as the Narrator contemplate's the Muse's question.     At length, she puts the question to him in different terms.]

Calliope:  Will the sufferer bare his pain or will he bear his pain alone?

Narrator:  I would imagine that in his solitary confinement, Prometheus had no choice but to bear his pain alone. 

Calliope:  Was there no one who bore witness to what he suffered?

[The narrator steps toward the temple's central chamber]
 
Narrator:  I hear a voice in the Temple's heart, but it is too faint to discern the words.   And the heart darkens as I step.  I can barely see or hear.

[From a finely decorated marble niche on her temple wall, Calliope retrieves a   scallop-shell filled with oil.  She removes a golden quill from her dark and flowing hair, and dips it into the oil.   She holds it up against the fire of a flaming brazier, and hands both the burning quill and the shell to the Narrator.]
 
Narrator:  I have done nothing to deserve such an exquisitely beautiful gift.  

Calliope:  This isn't to reward you for a work accomplished - but to equip you for the path that your ache and your anguish have set you upon.

[The Narrator vanishes into the temple heart, the burning quill lights the way, as words of golden fire write themselves upon the unraveled scroll at his feet. ]

copyright 2014,2015 WhisperingBird

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Love Light's Touch

Eternally Luminant One -

in whose direction 

the whole of my existence bends.

I felt your heart today.

through the withered hands

of my smiling grandmother

moments before

she made her way

back home 

to You.

copyright 2014 WhisperingBird

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One Nest. Many Lives.

I came home today

to a cacophony of warbling

from atop my East porch
column.

I looked through the glass in the door-frame and saw - not one - but three wildly chirping little beaks stretching up out of their nest.  

All I could hear was 
their ache to be 
as they were;
 

helpless and unknowing.

With all their might.

And the mother bird

took a moment from

feeding her babies.

And shot me a look.

As if it say

"My babies aren't helpless 
and unknowing!" 

"They sure as hell know

that they're hungry!"

"And they sure as hell

have the will to  stand up and 
say something about it."

Such a thundering point

from so small a bird.

I went and got

my spouse to come look.

There wasn't just one life

within the nest but three.  

How did I miss that?

She looked down upon

the stone floor of the East porch

and said

"There's going to be

an awful lot of bird

crap to clean up here."

                                                             copyright 2013, 2014 - WhisperingBird

Mistakes: Doorway to the Heart's Deeper Song

In Composition

the heart's longing

arises

in notes that ring and chime and sound

from the instrument

that is you.

And all too often

the mistakes that arise in practice

yield surprising and touching

turns

that transform a melodic phrase

into something else entirely.

Something moving

and inspired

that touches the being

in ways that could

not have been imagined

or predicted.

Sometimes

Mistakes are just the deeper self

struggling for a way

to birth itself as Divine Expression

into the here and now

of this Sacred Moment.

Dear light.

Would that I could be
so beautifully
mistaken

all my days
in this life.

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

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Soul's Gateway

 Look more deeply

into the heart of the feeling

that the Other is best thing

that's ever happened to you

And you may discover

that the awakening

of your conscious awareness

~ the living Love that lights

 the center of the temple You ~

is in fact the best thing

that's ever happened to you.

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

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Inner Riches

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

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Droppings of Light

I sat myself down
on the stone floor 
of the East porch

to scrape up the
pile of bird droppings
deposited there by
the winged occupants
of the porch column.

"You were once beetles,
and crickets,
and worms
and bugs."
I said to the droppings.

"Now you're just
bird crap dropped
atop a porch floor.

A stinking mess
to be swept up
and thrown away."

And as I got busy
scraping,
a gust of Northern 
March wind 
blew off my baseball cap
 
and unsettled
the nearby underbrush
where a bed of
dreaming peonies
lay sleeping in the
hush of the early spring.
 

And I carefully picked

up my cap - which 

had the bad luck 

of landing in my

dust pan

~of poop scrapings~

And in the work 

of shaking it clean,

the scrapings took on

an entirely

different form. 

"You were once among

my deepest wishes
my yearnings
my heart's longings"  

I said to them.

"Now you're just

My fears.

My mistakes.

My regrets and failures.

My droppings of Light."





 
"What if you're not really dead and gone forever", I wondered to myself


What if - like the droppings in my dust pan - you're just awaiting another spiral of rebirth and transformation?




So I brushed the droppings
from my dust pan and spread them 
onto the bed of flowers below. 

 "You may reek now." I said to them.  "But in time, you'll make the 
early summer Peonies  
bend and bow 
under the weight 
of so much bright white fragrant bloom."




"The rain and permeable earth will join you in sacred partnership until you've bathed and nourished the roots 
of all who slumber in this flower bed; who dream of a summer that has yet to come.
 



 



May you live on
in the heart of a butterfly

and fuel the beating wings 
of hummingbirds in the garden.
   

May my neighbors gather
for a hint of the vision and the scent of their own Divinity."

Leave it to Nature

to make

everything -

even bird crap.

my crap.

precious.

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

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Wild Exuberance

When you allow
the exuberant joy
of your inner wilderness
to spill itself out into the world

wherever it may
land and stretch and reach

you may find that the
moment of creative
self expression is made
even more captivating

by its stunning contrast
to the fixed steady underpinnings
of your earthly life.


copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

Photo courtesy of imgur.com/YPawohb

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Count Your Joy

He couldn't believe
that mine
was actually
a real job.

"I count things for people"

That's all I said.

And he couldn't
stop laughing

Even HE
~ a little kid ~
could count things
for people.   

DUH!

Now I couldn't stop laughing either.   

And when we finally

finished squandering

the very last nickel

of our joyous fit,

he dried his eyes

looked up at me

and said

Let's count

how long

we can go

without laughing.

What's the point in counting

if there is no joy in your counting 
and if what you're counting isn't your joy?

  

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

Photo Credits in Order of Appearance
cinema.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/imagecache/Large/images/pages/elephant-boy.jpg

istockphoto.com/stock-photo-3386227-math-time.php?st=8958ffa

                  
i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/8991023/2/stock-photo-8991023-abacus-with-red-hearts.jpg

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Dawn's Hatchling

Atop a column

on my East porch
I spotted a bird's nest  
as I left for work this morning. 

So I went and got a ladder from the barn - two legged earth trudging mud devil that I am -

and summited the peak

of the East porch
to take a look inside.

The single baby chick

lying within stirred

the very moment

I laid eyes on it.

I'd swear my gaze alone was the touch of a hand.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?", I asked it.

But the just hatched chick didn't make a sound. Not one blessed little peep.

It just lay within its nest among the fragments of its broken blue shell, gently trembling - while its mother unleashed a storm of chirping at me from atop a nearby tree branch.

"I don't believe there's a creature alive on earth", I said to her, "that doesn't know what it feels like to be torn between the need for self preservation and devotion to the heart's love.   In any event, I've tortured you enough for one day."

So I got down from my ladder and into my car and drove off to work.

As the morning's rush hour stretched for miles behind me, the only reflection discernible in my side view mirror 

was the unbroken continuum of love and devotion 

- going back perhaps millions of years - 

that was unfolding itself 
atop a column 
on my East porch.

  

Approaching the overpass

on I-51, the question
just wouldn't stop
stirring.   

 



What does it mean 
that my spirit  

no longer fits 

in what had been 

the blissfully roomy shell

of my dream

job?

copyright 2012,2013 WhisperingBird

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