Our Heart's Belonging
There are places where our heart belongs,
And places where we have two hearts.
Where the beatings play separate songs,
Under the skies of ending nights.
Take your stick for your start,
Take the morning filling your will to live,
And set out on the path under the rising light,
Walking with nobody to deceive.
It is a contingent day, in a long land,
Full of mountains that disappear when you close your eyes.
The journey extends over valleys and your hand
Grasps that of all your loved ones.
The songs of the hearts takes a toll,
On those who cry deaths and lonely, silent mornings,
Where your eyes are set and close on your own light,
Where the songs feel like the pain that rings.
Overlooking your friend’s sleep,
You’re forgiveful to their future,
As if that of a child’s, impossible to keep.
You’re sobbing because light sets and rises again.
Stepping in the pathways with their sheeps,
The monks are to say their prayers.
Two hearts beat in one when you stand alone in a cell,
Lodged in the fissures of inexisting cures.
So tonight she leaves the small room and goes,
To the chapel when it’s empty,
Where she speaks to the heart she knows,
And ready to take over the fight.
The next morning she’ll rise and fearless of the light
The morning will cast its blue shadows on the places
Where prayers resonate like two hearts,
Belonging in reciprocate devotion.
This year’s PoWR has brought “compassion” to the center stage. In their discussion ‘Advocating for LGBTQIA+ Justice inside and Outside Protestant Churches’, C. DiNovo and Rvd. Jide Macaulay have invited the participants to dialog and action, in favor of queer people in all churches. Yet, my personal experience strongly contrasted here : confronted with homophobia and misogyny in my own church, I felt I would always be naturally unfit to fully live my faith.
On a way always back to light, growing in between contradictory ways to give meaning to love and friendship, notions that are yet at the heart of so many religions, I have let myself to be guided by “compassion”. In empathy with myself and others, in the Latin meaning, in a common pain : making sense out of life can be so daunting than simply going to a retreat, away, and feeling the emotions as they flow in as a way to reconnect with faith.
