Moon Woman

Ms. Moon's wonderful post today, about sense memory and the light in October, holds these lines in its spacious arms:

Pain catches but simply hold still. Breathe in and out, it melts away, there is nothing at all to fear.

And she offers these instructions:

Wrap your body in blue linen that flows around your legs like water, your arms in softest cotton which holds them as gently as a lover's arms, warm under the covers. Feed your mouth sweet apples and bitter greens and look upon your feet, strong as a dancers', having yes, danced, through all these years. Comb your hair and tie it up above your neck which holds the head which holds the brain which holds the thoughts collected in all the cells through all the years. Ignore at your leisure, review at your pleasure, wear all your jewelry like queen's gold treasure around neck, around arms, around fingers, dripping from earlobes, fat like Buddha's, perhaps, or not.

And this:

And if there is pain, simply be still and breathe in and breathe out feel it melt away, softened and changed and then gone. 

Repeat and repeat and repeat as necessary.

Then rest.

There. See?

My husband and I have been rereading Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, and rediscovering the wisdom in that slim volume. We had each first encountered his words when we were teenagers, islands apart, me in Jamaica and him in Antigua, and as we passed out of our teens, we both dismissed those ideas that had so resonated in our questing hearts, adopting the mistaken notion that those words must have been trite to have moved us so, because after all, we were so young, what did we even know?

Turns out we knew what spoke to us, speaks to us still.

Thank you, dear Mary Moon, for these words that speak to me today.

There is nothing at all to fear.