Messages From Carrie

I Do Not Know Its Name

May 20th, 2009

Trying to describe that mysterious spirit that moves through the world, is like the old story of the three blind men who are asked to describe an elephant. The first man placed his hands on the elephant’s side and said, an elephant is like a wall.” The second man placed his hands on the trunk and said, “An elephant is like a rope.” The third man placed his hands on the leg and said, “An elephant is like a tree.” Each man was correct. And yet, each description was limited and based upon the man’s individual encounter with the animal. Like the blind men in the story I can only reach out my hands and feel what is placed before me each day, Although I shape songs and poems to describe what I encounter, I know that my descriptions will always be limited. The world is infused with a spirit, a light that is everywhere and at the same time nowhere. It has no name, and cannot be contained in words. It is elusive and perches for a moment then flies away. It is a flickering of light on the floor that catches my eye. It is a scent of something I can’t quite remember. It is everywhere and nowhere and it is the stuff that instills my life with meaning. I am very comfortable with solitude, but I am most lonely when that nameless mystery feels like a missing person, a lost face on a milk carton.

In April, I was facilitated a workshop at Pendle Hill Quaker Retreat. In the community’s busy communal breakfast room, a white-haired lion of an old man sat down next to me. He leaned in and quietly read from a book of poetry, “clearly I am not needed, but I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value” “The light burns upwards” “Make your self into a flame.” Then he raised his head and we grinned at one another like two little kids with a secret. I do not know it’s name, but something illuminated that moment. Three years ago, on a Sunday morning, the driver of a rental car shuttle sang me a gospel hymn. I was his one passenger, the only soul to hear him finish with a flourish as the doors swished open. Once, I found a bird nest by my back door that contained the tiny perfect egg of a Carolina wren. Once a single hawk feather floated down in front of me, and when I looked up there was no bird. Last summer I watched a bluegill fish guarding it’s nest in the shallows of a small pond. It looked up at me as defiantly as a hand size bluegill could gaze. My heart broke a little in the presence of such fierce love. Something unnamable is contained in such moments. Something beyond language is always watching, singing, floating down right in front of me. And so I reach out my hands and move them over and around it’s contours.

There was never a day when the world was not new. It is predictable that the unpredictable will happen. Surely, this true, because I chanced to meet a white haired lion who read me poetry over oatmeal, and I will never be the same.