After brokenness - mercy

I posted awhile back someone else's essay about the state of being broken and how it's a positive thing. And my dad replied on his blog with an example of a time when he felt broken.

The state of brokenness might help us see flaws in our own thinking or acting or way of being. Author and writing teacher Lucy March talks about towering*, from the tarot card where you see a tower being destroyed, usually by lightning. 

Maybe a flash of insight that makes you realize (in the language of memes) ...

"Life: You're doing it wrong."

But I don't believe in letting the tower fall on you. Guilt and remorse are useful emotions for a time, but they shouldn't crush us. 

One of my dad's favorite passages from Shakespeare is the whole "quality of mercy is not strained" speec which is indeed beautiful, but it's about showing mercy toward other people. Leonard Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy" is a good compliment to it because it's a reminder that mercy is available to us as well. A lot of tarots show greenery outside of the tower--mercy as "graceful and green as a stem"?

So this is my song-reply to my dad's reply. 

Pick the version you think you'll like best, cause I love them all.

It's obviously touched many artists.

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.

They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.

And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me their song.

Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.

It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.

Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:

When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

They lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.

They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn

they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.

Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.

And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:

We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,

We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

Serena Ryder

Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt

Original Leonard 

Leonard Cohen with the sisters of mercy backing him up  

Sting and the Chieftains

_________

* Lucy March has just re-released an older book in ebook form--the very book she talks about in her post on towering. I haven't read it yet! But you should buy it too cause it's just $3. :-)  "When I wrote The Fortune Quilt, my writing goal for the book was to tell a story about someone whose life had completely fallen apart. Like the beginning of a country western song, the book would start with her losing everything she held dear – family, friends, and career – and would chronicle how she rebuilt her life from there. In the book, the main character, Carly, ends up in a community of psychics and artists, where she is then told that this horrible experience she has had, her entire life falling apart, is a universal experience, and it is called ‘Being Towered.’"

                  

Your Journey is Always in Draft Form

[This posting talks about Betties. See the Betties tab to understand the reference if needed.]

The Original Betty who started the Bettying--that is to say Lucy March who decided to blog for 500+ days until her 40th birthday--describes what she went through, her last marriage, as being towered. The term comes from the tarot...

I love the added insult of God's hand reaching out with a mallet to give the tower a thwack and the "not again" look on the Fool's face.

"There’s a card in the tarot called The Tower. Although tarot decks vary, The Tower is one of the illustrations that offers the least variation. Almost always, you have a tower, the top of which has suffered some horrible calamity, causing it to break off, and as the Tower tumbles, you see people jumping off, trying desperately to get to safety. Typically… it doesn’t look good for them."

 "...Despite the apparent tragedy of the card – and let’s make no mistake, there’s loads of tragedy in a good Towering – I have to say that, in hindsight, I look at all the times I’ve been Towered in my life and I think, “Thank God.”... every Tower that has fallen has taught me something about how they are built."   [To read her full post go here.]

Now she's found some peace and the blog is being turned into a community, but it's leaving in mourning many of the blog readers whose lives didn't undergo the same transformation that hers' did over the last 500 days. There's a reasonable sense of abandonment, that was poignantly addressed in a recent entry.

But still... a new journey can begin any day, for anyone. Many journeys have already begun, it's just that they're still at the scary-bottom-of-the-hill-looking-up-at-the-steep-incline stage. Or the brave-explorer-lost-in-the-frozen-ice-fields stage. Brr.

As I walked home from the library today Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" came on my mp3 player, and instead of thinking of Pantene, I thought of Betty Angel.


I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned