Art is my God
"Love is my currency," I often say to my clients when I give intuitive readings. Sometimes I have a subject who needs much more time than allotted, or a hug, or a safe massage, or a meal. I have lost track of time because I'm busy splashing about happily in the river of God's hilarious, joyful light running through my hands, eyes, ears and words. I know I'm lucky to serve and be a channel, and the position of helping the innocent must never be abused, like a sword.
To ensure proper usage, I know I must constantly maintain myself, remembering that I am forever just a speck. So I count my blessings but also my flaws and mistakes, cleaning my eyes of judgement so that I can see myself with love, smiling, even when I'm doing everything wrong.
"It's okay," I must learn to say to myself as I watch myself fall again and again. "I forgive you," I say as I acknowledge my lack of grace, witnessing the consequences, and observing the laws of nature passing through the medium of my life. A traffic ticket. A credit card bill. A hangover. These are indicators, not punishments. These are opportunities to make myself right.
I see and I see and I see. Yup, that child is aglow with the many months I've respected her, and now she loves and believe in herself. Yup, that kitchen is full of too many dishes from all the days I've chosen to over-work, instead of self-care.
And who is this God? Despite common religious misuse of the word, I've decided to dust it off, and share my own personal experience.
God is art! God is our camera buzzing and waiting with love on the table when the day glows outside with redwoods and the sweet smell of grass awakening the nose, hands, heart.
God is the food we lovingly received from the farmers, glowing with life and waiting to be sculpted into a fragrant offering for a circle of grateful and laughing friends.
God is our own blank canvas, our lump of clay, our ball of light who wants to sing out our unique and radiant truth. God is the little voice that says, "sing and dance with your friends."
God is the funniest joke you've ever heard, and it came from a 5-year-old. God is the tickle in your heart that makes you want to do something nice when you pass someone deeply suffering. You've been there.
However, we all know that no one can really say for sure, who God is. I'm just brainstorming.
It's all up to you.
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Her name is Carol
I've been barking up a lot of trees. "I have this amazing new space for community, art, and love," I've been telling anyone who would listen. "Please, come share it." And I pull and force and beg all these beautiful unready souls, who uncomfortably try to make me happy by attempting feigned cooperation.
I've been ready to find her, but I didn't know it would be a her. There was one last piece to clear, the pool of grief hidden behind the fragmented place in my heart.
I have been going it alone. Living in the back storage room of my arts school, on an industrial island in a city of strangers. Happily loving on children all day, broken and empty at night. Communing with the demons to fill my void. Awakening the next day with a depleted face, mustering energy to face my devoted subjects, apologies in my heart. I didn't know how to heal. It's been here forever.
Lover after lover. Why can't I find her? Not being able to see her face, but feeling her heart call to me from all of time and space. Learning from one relationship and then the next, so tired of learning. Narrowing it down, proving I was willing to commit to the right one, only to be rejected.
I awoke one morning a couple weeks after Christmas, broken and unable to move. I couldn't do this anymore. I had to stop going to bars. I had to stop feeding my sadness. I had to find my true meaning.
I pulled the plug on my wound. No more spending. This really meant: I want to face myself.
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I want to be witnessed
You've heard it before: to achieve this kind of healing, you have to really want it. Maybe you have to by lying broken at the feet of all your vices, face in the stink of your mistakes. You're drowning in the quicksand of all your shit and all your pain. To the outside world, it just seems like another day, like the mundane imperfection we all bear. But inside, you know you are in hell.
I reached out to a friend in another city, whose writing had touched me. I knew she was a teacher and thought maybe she could coach me. "No," she said, "but do I need a writing buddy." We set up a schedule, which I failed to follow almost immediately. She was buoyantly supportive and encouraging, despite my unconscious efforts to stay stuck.
It started with messages to each other, apologizing for not upholding our agreements. Sincere attempts on my part to make time to read and edit her stuff. Competent and thoughtful feedback on her part.
Our meetings turned into conversations that tickled me. She made me laugh loudly, filling my empty studio. Her kindness and willingness to share this work all the way to the bottom of things. Are friends like this really real? I knew I was lucky.
And all the way we went, one conversation after the next, learning about each other's past and present. Really listening, Really listening even more. Unable to not hear the beauty in each other's words. Seeing myself through the love in her eyes. Admiring her integrity, her self honesty, her relentless willingness to laugh at herself.
The beauty, the beauty is cleaning me. The forgiveness, it keeps going to the bottom, and there seems to be more and more. It's surprising how it doesn't seem to end.
I keep finding myself over and over in our conversations, find myself her sweet presence during the day and waiting to meet her at night. My heart is moving things; I'm crying at the gift of being unwrapped, and known so deeply.
I don't have to beg. She was always there, a swan in the waiting. She's honest, and earnest, not to mention
Primal,
a premonition of
hair and cheeks touching and
hands and arms embracing into a oneness with all of life,
a tree of devoting its roots deep into the earth,
tickling the childlike light of heaven.
Oh, but it was hard to believe, and I tested its virility. I called her on a Friday night, drunk. My "friends" yelling in the background, hijacking my phone and shrinking the balloon of our growing trust.
I heard the fear in her voice, and that was it. I was not going to lose this one.
I asked her to give me three weeks.
Knowing that restriction is my trigger, I cut way back without making hard-fast rules. I stopped allowing active alcoholics into my channels. I prayed for strength to truly face my wounds. At night, my chest tightened as the demons threatened me. I awoke with nightmares and called her to protect me. She laughed and held me and soothed me. You can do this, Danielle.
My true friend, my guiding light.
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For the Child Within Me
I held my students' piano recitals on a Sunday. Three recitals of 15-20 students in one day, means about 60-80 guests total per recital.
The night before, the accumulation of all my toxic patterns held me awake all night. God wanted to talk to me. Danielle, it's time. The time is here to grow up, to learn, to work and to love.
In those tossing waking hours, I wrote a letter to Carol and gave her my heart.
I wrote a speech to my students and their families, and gave them my heart. I addressed the times we are facing: The inauguration of our new president, the millions of women coming together because they want to make a better world. That music can help us to make the world better, that coming together is the answer.
I spent the next day in service. With zero sleep, I gave them all my everything. These children give me everything, they are my everything.
Children, children climbing up on a lit stage, bravely playing out their songs, pricking our eyes with tears as their innocent voices fill the speakers in the room.
We built an altar of thank-you's. Little post-it notes counting our blessings, giving devotion to each other, to music, and to our many gifts.
After each performance, the room glowed with love and celebration. The kids delighting in treats and friendship, feeling proud for their hard work. Adults building community, expanding their village. Your children are my children. Let's watch them grow in our love for years to come. Let's help each other build a world like this.
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Miracles Do Happen
The next morning, I was wrecked. I couldn't teach. I had to change my life so that I could take better care of myself, so I could be a stronger leader.
I scrambled to find help. I've been training some teachers in my approach to teaching piano, and they stepped up to substitute teach.
I received a call from an Israeli man. A parent had sensed that we could help each other. He volunteers on this parent's intentional community. He is an aspiring musician and teacher, and loves to serve God. What he can he do to help?
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Let Go and Let God
Two young men with dark hair, accents, and kind glowing eyes walk through the door. One sits and tells me over tea that he is starting a healing center with his father, but he needed to separate and go out into the world. He is wolfing and going where God takes him, one day at a time.
They help me do the dishes, sweep the floor, take out the garbage, play with the children. The children go to him like moth to a light. He disappears and plays guitar, cleaning the space with his love.
We get in the car to go somewhere away from the business, leaving the substitute for the first time. The substitute is as vulnerable as me: learning to make his life a prayer of art, love and service. It's his first day and I'm proud of him. As we drive to a coffee shop, my heart seizes up.
My angel appears in the form of light on my right side. She shows my Yotom's heart. My whole body cramps up and I let out a sound. "Are you okay?" asks Yotom.
Then, he feels it. Something passes through him. "Oh, I see," he says. "You're letting go of something dark. It's okay Danielle, I'll clean it. I'm going to help you."
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I Am Willing to Heal
We sit in the coffee shop and lock eyes. His look like little suns. "Do you blink?" I ask. He smiles, blinks, and says yes.
He tells me he is going to help me heal. I must wake tomorrow and do yoga, meditate. After yoga we will go together to San Francisco to the co-op to get my supplements. I should eat fruit for breakfast, lentils and rice for lunch, and fish for dinner. I should take the recommended supplements, and do these things for 21 days. No more substances. Prepare to sleep at 11, be deep in sleep by midnight. Wake at 6 to repeat. Within one week you should be feeling much better, no longer sick.
He will help me at the studio. He needs enough pay to get by, no more. He wants to be in my presence and see what I do. He wants to help me grow the community, turn my school into a temple. Let's do kirtan, make circles, do yoga.
We don't know what it will look like. We have to decide in the present.
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I Deserve Love
I talk to Carol and we have lost all our inhibitions, in a good way, not in a careless impulsive way. After years of searching for truth alone, We know a good thing when we see it.
I sleep with my heart linked up to God, to art, to Yotam and Carol and my children. I finally sleep, and I wake ready to be a woman.
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