The Most Vulnerable

The most vulnerable people carry the heaviest crosses, so to speak. And I speak for myself and my family. It started out with just my husband and I alone in Atlanta. I stayed home and he went to work at an airline.

Our first child was a boy, the second a girl. She has been gone over forty years now. I woke up and listened to Leonard Cohen “Live in London.” It is early and I had already had a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea. It was not even light and that this is why I went back to bed.

Bob left right after he turned sixty-three and was buried right before Christmas.

Fourteen years later I still search for them in my mind and find them only in my heart. Mementos do not comfort me; I have stripped down to basics. Just my son and I in our deep vulnerability.

He lost his childhood at age seven when his sister got cancer. His father and grandfather both died of the same cancer at the same time of year. His grandmother used to take him to the cemetery’s grotto when he was young. Inside someone had built the story of Jesus from birth to death. I looked out in the yard when he was about five. He was carrying a cross he had fashioned from some pieces of wood.

The two of us are so vulnerable in our solitary journeys, never quite in step, each one in their solitary journey back to the light.

I love when Leonard Cohen sings of that “broken hill” in his prayer “If It Be Your Will.”

I sing in that same way only on paper. Few hear my voice. That is the way it goes. Everybody knows.

We all know how vulnerable and broken one must be to hear the inner voice calling us home. It is terrifying and fascinating. The glib easy path is not for me. If it were, I would certainly choose to walk that way.

So I stumble on, with great faith that the darkness is a fruitful and necessary path for some. And on the way, “it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”

Vicki Woodyard

2 Comments

  1. Dearest Vicki-Friend and Sister! Just a day ago, marked the parting of my mother, it is 2 years now, and as you too, I sense her HERE within the heart – also I feel, the so called ‘dead’ are part of us, for ever – just roaming within other realms. If we see further, as you always do and seek onwards, beyond the dark and painful – but still through it – not rushing, not ‘deleting’ what happened, as all experiences are alive, like a beingness – how can we not be with them. from head to toe.

    Aware and mightily working at the Inner School, doing our homework daily – how ever struggling, and pressing, never just letting go of the Path, the Journey to the Source of God, where we all come from.

    Your sacred words, also about your son, which I love you do – always shine and flower here at my home-place – where ever I am, it is your tender seeing, your bright wisdom – that alarms me softly and in kindness – to do as you do, using better concentrations, with the intent and wish, that the future is bright for all, safe, healing and soundly enriching.

    Imagine, if all the people – just cared for just THIS ONE sole GOAL, and I always ask myself, why don’t we?? – in whatever way the individual chooses to study, support, create, or whom to find sympathetic or not – if we first and foremost cared for our all’s connectivity, where we are in unity as humanity – white or black, south or north, big or small, here or there – how could further into the future, anything be unsolvable, hurting or ignorant on this earthly plane – not for long, because then we actively KNOW that a harmonious Life, where eternal Development is actually happening, IS REAL – and given individual freedom within in how to choose, to work is subjective and always for the good of all and just.

    While not yet too many, care soulfully, friendly, openly learning together, many because they think they know it all, nothing to gain, no results needed. But there are certainly worlds, the many rooms of God, we have no clue about.

    So if all we do, thinking spirited, is for guaranteeing a sane human system, for the other, for ourselves – it will so develop. Yes we create the world, one sees the proof without – it is us forming, minding, creating….dearest Vicki – with you as our warm friend and certain guide, committed without fail, to the well and fruitful and glorious Humanity, we naturally can be just THAT.

    Love, and thank you for everything, Silja

    Reply

    1. “Yes we create the world, one sees the proof without – it is us forming, minding, creating…” Dear Silja, this is so true.

      Reply

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