The soul has a burden it carries throughout the life of the ego. The ego has obscured its light and now it plunges headlong into the darkness of this fallen world.

I take up my cross daily, the night dreams that find me lost and hopeless; the daydreams that think that one day I will understand.

Remnants of the soul’s song have surfaced from time to time. I waltz with Leonard Cohen, I sit in Vernon Howard’s classroom, I lie in the arms of my husband again.

The sorrow is the price we pay for taking our mortal births. Let no one tell you otherwise as they smother the soul in expensive clothing and brag about trips to exotic places.

No one yet has solved the mystery of why the intellect so brilliantly cloaks the wisdom of the soul in cheap finery.

No one yet has totally learned the lessons that only loss can teach us.

The words I write are taken from the tiny bundle of jewels I have smuggled into this world.

I pull them out and type them into essays that often just talk about what I am doing down here on earth. Nothing fulfilling, nothing meaningful. I drag my wheeled luggage around just like everyone else. There is no resting place.

We point to people living in cardboard boxes and think “Thank God I have not fallen so low.” That very statement comes from the gutter.

And the world whirls on and poets of darkness point us back home and we ignore them. We prefer arguing about politics and watching videos of cats and dogs. They are more loving than we are.

I don’t know why I keep writing unless it is to distract myself with how bad off I am. Any moment could find me falling into another pit. I simply have no answers.

And then the silence sneaks up on me, covers me with a downy quilt and I begin to listen to something strange. A memory of goodness, a sigh into sorrow and I remember for a moment the soul’s obligation to remember itself. And so I do. And everything changes. The blind see and the lame walk. And I am able to take another step back into this fallen world.

Vicki Woodyard