It is very hard to distinguish between all of the voices in our heads. Yet the Silent One has yet to say a word!

As I look back on my life, Vicki has asked this question in many varied situations, “How long is this going to last?”

The hardest times are when we are losing loved ones slowly but surely to incurable diseases. I asked it as my seven-year-old lay dying. I wanted her suffering to end, but that meant I would never see her again.

And my grief came and unpacked its bags and stayed under our roof for decades. And I wondered how long it was going to stay.

When my beloved Bob fell ill, each day I wondered how long it was going to last. And even now I can imagine his footsteps heavy on the kitchen floor.

And so I became a writer and a student of the Way, and now I wonder how long it is going to last.

For words are finite and understanding develops oh, so slowly, in our stubborn and unyielding hearts.

Gurus come and go. We dance with different ones wearing various disguises. We pray to make progress but the question persists, “How long is this going to last?”

And when Leonard Cohen asked in his final album, “You Want It Darker” I wondered how long my love for him would last. And now I think I know the answer.

It will last as long as we remember that length is not an indicator of anything. And the Silent One still has yet to say a word.

The depths of the soul are filled with questions that go unanswered. I often wonder how I have survived so long this lifetime and not seen through the question.

I have been off-line for over a month now and I wonder how long my silence is going to last and if anyone cares or misses me.

I am emailing my brother and we are reminiscing about our childhood in a little red brick house on Carrington Road. We never asked that question then because we were too busy living in the moment. And it was enough and often too much.

That little girl is still alive and well inside of me and she has never yet asked that question. I turn to her now and find her sweetness is genuine and her love totally pure. There is no time limit on who we really are. The guru has long since gone away. He tiptoed into the shadows when he saw that I had remembered how it is in the Paradise of Love.

There is no end and no beginning to love. My little girl still laughs on my lap and my husband still smiles into my eyes. And I never left that little brick house. Whoever can solve this riddle deserves all the love their heart can hold. The stars, unending in their light, are in us as us. We are made of love and that is going to last forever.

Vicki Woodyard

P.S.
I will return in a month or so.