Longings are one of the most
eloquent ways
the soul speaks to us.
~Sue Monk Kidd
This morning I open the curtains about an hour before sunrise and there, hanging low outside the window is the crescent moon. Just a sliver of white-gold, the only thing visible in the clear dark sky, and oh, the brightness of that tiny lune. My breath catches and I go still, she a magnet drawing me to her like she always does, always, no matter what, but especially when rising before dawn, especially when I am just waking from sleep, especially when she's so unexpected; and like the seas and the tides, I am powerless over her magnetism.
I've been thinking a lot lately about attraction and magnetism, these everyday enchanters, harbingers of desire and longing and falling in love--with anything really, though most often we think about it in terms of another. The truth is I've not only been thinking about it, I've been wrestling with it, I've been resisting it, and worst of all, I've been feeling not only embarrassed, but in some moments, quite abashed by it.
Then these words arrived, so beautifully timed, as happens so often when I'm in the midst of exploring something. From Deborah Eisenberg's new movie, Let Them All Talk:
I think attraction is the animating force in the universe, really. Like gravity or the pull of the poles, what pulls the monarch butterflies to fly across the world. If you feel attracted to someone from your heart, and you look at them and you feel you can see their soul, there is no bad version of that; to want to be a part of that, and we should treasure it, we’re lucky to have that feeling. It’s the greatest, it’s the fullest expression of what it is to be alive.
Attraction, the fullest expression of what it is to be alive.
Oh my.
A favorite thing I'm learning in photography right now is to shoot through, where you photograph through something. It can be a crystal or prism or a translucent film of color, a plastic bag even, or, as in the photo above, it could be the blossoms in the forefront when focusing on the blooms behind them. It can create a hot, confusing mess, or, it can create something wildly, unexpectedly beautiful.
Hearing Eisenberg's main character's words changes everything in less time that it takes my heart to skip a beat. And it makes me think of shooting through, when with a single click, suddenly there is a focus point that is remarkably clear, and all the struggle that has stood in the way is now soft and supple, shapeless even, yet still, inexplicably, part of the beauty of the thing itself. And there in brilliant focus is the gift, the treasure of attraction... to be fully alive... no matter what may or may not come from it, which is not even the point, the real point being that it's incredible to feel so awake, to have a heart so very open, to be tender and vulnerable in spite of living in a world that incessantly suggests only the opposite is safe, and to bask in that, just that.
Yes, attraction's offspring is desire, which may or may not be met, and desire's child is longing; unmet longing can make the heart ache for sure. Though contrary to what I've learned elsewhere, it is only when diving deeply into the world of the Beloved Feminine that I understand longing as the beautiful tiding of the heart that it is, the profound solicitation to open, and yes, where we can actively engage with the soul, as Sue Monk Kidd writes. And it's true that we may find pleasure, or we may find pain, we never know, because aliveness invites the whole of life in, it endows us with its full spectrum, the joyful, the grievous, and everything in between.
Some magnetisms are fleeting, they may last a day or a season. Some last a lifetime. Like tall bearded irises and tiger swallowtails. Like music and the color blue. Like the sunrise and the moon rise. Like the ocean and dolphins and Maui. Some fill you with joy, others break your heart. Some stay with you, against all rationale, against all better judgment, against inner criticism and outer, through years of therapy and letter writing, some sent but most shredded. You wring your hands, you struggle, you pine, you weep, then one day you turn on a movie and in an instant, click. Everything else melts into the frame: the self judgment, the quest to understand, the resistance, even the shame, and in that moment you accept with gladness what is, and you let this great and marvelous mystery, this aliveness, have its way with you.
💓
