Coffee Creek Correctional Facility I have been keenly aware this week that bringing love to the dark and constricted places, clears the way for Spirit to use me as a divine vessel...an instrument of love. This journey into love is an act of sacred service...the more available and present I become (the hallow bone)...the more Love can move through me, as me. I am grateful tonight for the experience of Rumi's words..."when you open your loving to God's love, you are helping people you don't even know and have never seen." Amen to that.
Tonight I sat at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility with Nichole. I sat for 30 minutes in the cafeteria with the other visitors before she came in. She had been "walking the yard" and the officers didn't inform her of her visit. As I waited, I watched the children, ranging from age 1 to 15, run to their mothers as they walked through the door into the visiting room. One little red headed girl about 2 years old ran through the tables and chairs laughing, squealing..."Mommy, mommy, mommy!" The older children seemed to be more hesitant...trying to hold in their excitement which is now swirling with their pain...with their sense of betrayal. I can see it in their eyes...big love mixed with big pain. My heart opened and tears welled in my eyes...the agony of love, of addiction, of betrayal, of prison.
Nichole finally arrives. We embrace and share the details of our day. I ask her about Isiah, her son who will be 7 years old in September. She hasn't seen him for 4 years. His paternal grandparents have legal guardianship. Her eyes well up with tears as she begins to connect with her grief. I draw a little dot on a piece of paper..."Nichole, this is all the faith it takes for the mountain to move and it will move, can you have this much faith that there is a way to reconnect with Isiah?" She nods her head. And right there in the middle of a noisy, crowded room...we prayed and set the intention that she and Isiah will see one another this year.
"Nichole, I think you should work the twelve steps around your relationship with Isiah." She nods again. Our foreheads wrinkle as we both try and remember the first three steps...1) Admit I am powerless over XXX situation 2) Believe a power greater knows the way to sanity 3) surrender the situation. We walk through the first three steps together. I ask her to begin the 4th step...a fearless moral inventory around her part of creating the situation. More tears. She tries to keep her eyeliner and mascara from smearing. We laugh a little. Eyes locked on one another. I tell her I am committed to staying awake with her, to do everything that I am guided to do to help her. I know this was part of the reason for her relapse. It was Christmas. She was alone. Without her family, without her son. I can only imagine the heartbreak she numbed with Meth. (By the way, I am not excusing the choice, the behavior...just feeling in with compassion tonight).
I pray for Divine guidance and support. I feel powerless, I know that the Divine can guide us to right action...I surrender my fears and ask for God to guide me in how to best support this young woman and her son.
A woman stops by our table with her son. I recognize them. They were at the table beside us last weekend. Her 9-year old son vomited everywhere. Most people moved, with disdain and disgust on their faces. We stayed. I looked over, looked at her with compassion and love. It's okay, I thought to myself, this is life...sometimes we get messy...sometimes we vomit everywhere...sometimes we can hold it in...hold it together any longer. Tonight she stops and says, "thanks Anakha for last week, you really made it better for me." I am surprised...she must have felt the compassion, the love, the silent support.
That is the power of the Crucible (www.wearethelovers.com ). Yes, I want to be healed into wholeness and yes, I want to be fully available to be an instrument of Love...to embody and express and experience this radical Love and Loving. I want my presence to be alchemical, transformational...to be the medicine and the elixir of Love. That is why I am here...that is what I devote and donate my life and my living to. Everything else has dissolved, faded. Love my primary purpose now.
We end our time together writing about our heart's desires and our wants. I make a list. I notice how I hold some desires and wants as more "lofty" than others...more spiritual. I smile and remember that they are all expressions of love...
One of my wants is to have the Crucible be a place where the seeds of our dreams are planted...individual and collective. I want us to come together and donate this experience and the love we generate in service to others. I want to listen for how we are called to serve together as a community...what will we create together? I want us to remember that this journey into love is serving others, healing the planet. Right here, right now.
Love in action. That is my intention. How can I serve? Show me, guide me, inspire me God!
I am available. Humbled, hollowed...available.
Amen. Love, Anakha
P.S. This is Nichole's writing regarding her heart's desire...
My desire in this life...is to fully love myself through all the things I've done...the wrong doing, the right doing. I desire happiness, to follow my dreams. I desire to turn from my old ways. My decision: to not live as an active drug addict...to be in recovery. This will allow me to desire better things. I desire a life with Isiah, to love him, to help him, to laugh and cry with him. My choice is allowing me to desire this connection, and for it to come true. I am desiring all things possible for me, with the guidance from those around me and especially from God within me. Amen.
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