Meditation Two: Where You Are, There It Is.
“Sangre de Cristo” by Elizabeth Tarbox
My names for god don’t work here in the desert because they are ocean words. I know how to stir the mystery of the dark waters and move the spirit of briny swells to life because it is my spirit, my mother that rises from the waves to meet my call. And I am not afraid.
But here I need a new language, a language that loves clean white branches reaching to a blue sky and the hard open mouth of a dry riverbed beneath the canyon wall. Who are these gods that strike the blood-red walls of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where spruce and aspen with crooked fingers clutch the wild wind’s laugh?
I am ill at ease out here where ravens fly upside down, huge feet curled with the ecstasy of high flight, preening their feathers in casual command of the wind’s army. I can imagine being caught by a hawk’s beak, carried to 10,000 feet, and being indigestible, dropped upon the desert floor. I can imagine thirst draining from my veins, withering my skin till it flakes away. And I am less than I have ever been, because I do not know how to call the spirit of the mountain, or how to name the gods that move among these rocks.
Kindly, the universe puts its great lips to my ear and whispers, listen.
Listen.
You do not need to know the name of god, or call it. You need only to know that you do not know, and lift your face and stand in its presence
and give thanks.
