Voices: The Darkness and I

Voices: The Darkness and I

I.

You who seek do not need to seek me, for I am always here. I have not left. It is as it has always been and always will be. The past is present and will continue. You cannot escape because I am what you know. You know me too well and worship me, which makes me stronger in you.

Medusa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1630

I am the Medusa, the destroyer. I am the darkness where light fades. I am the event horizon into which all things are drawn. I will crush them into nothingness and you can not escape the gravitational pull of our love for one another.

It is inevitable that each time you seek, you will find me, for I am what you know and therefore you will always come back to me. When you become the bird of your soul and fly to heaven, it is with me that you will land again. I am the olive branch, the world, the earth beneath your feet, these things you know, and I live where you know.

II.

I sought to banish you. I thought I could fight you single-handed. I saw myself as a God. I thought I knew you, that I understood your evil and could name you and hated you as that which I had named. I sought to smite you but did not understand that the sword I held was yours. And I cursed you when you failed me.

And yet you compel me to seek the light and a power greater than me, which I know as darkness. Without you I am nothing. Without your evil, I cannot feel my grief or pain, and so cannot know love. I must be a murderess and the one who dies.

I cannot flee. It is true, there is no escape. And yet, when I surrender, when I take wing and float along the thermal winds of chaos and light, I find myself where wolves howl and the moon is silent and alive.  You have not left and yet I am the armless maiden whose tears thwart you. The light has slit my throat and blood drenches my body. The sun pierces my eyes as I lift my head skyward in a cry to heaven.

My cup runneth over and I find myself a blood filled grail, holy, pure and innocent. Abundance is upon the land and I see the golden city, the earth and the ancient forest. I see cereus bloom at night and tilting worlds, and know that I am mad. And I see all growing and green things born anew lift their heads to the sun. A cry to heaven, let there be light. The child is born, Genesis.

Black Madonna by Katherine Skaggs