Emptying Limbs of Resistance

 

“If a storm should holler and range and shake the skies,

walk out in it, let your body be blasted

by an energy that knocks you sideways,

emptying your limbs of all resistance.” Coming to Water, Nicola Slee

Please indulge me being stuck on this poem. It is such intriguing comfort in this time of multiple griefs. In a commanding or authoritative voice it summons me to a margin, an edge, which is still tethered to the Center. 

Many of us remain in the center or what we think is the safe place, shielded from the uncertainty and even threats of the edge of all being. On that margin, though,  reside the poor, the oppressed, and the broken hearted. That is where holy binding takes place. The binding of wounds and breaks.

Similarly, these lines from Nicola Slee are counterintuitive at first. I was taught to take shelter in storms. But some storms, the metaphorical type, might require immersion and embrace. It is at first frightening to think of being “blasted” until one thinks of some instance, some moment when exactly this happened! For some it is a conversion or call. For others it is traveling to the eye of the storm and traversing the winds to get to that stillness. 

For me the compelling part is the “emptying of resistance”. While I would have thought I could not get any emptier three weeks ago, I have since learned that waves of amazing and divine energy are still knocking me around AND to relax into the process I believe will lead to some sacred revelation. It won’t be mine alone because I will be “empty”; it will be a filling by that baptizing wetness.