Life Happens…

As light’s luminosity holds her gaze hostage to its intriguing wiles, the seamless horizon blends with endless prairie grasses, alluring her into its silent dusky lullaby. With the subtlety of the patiently observant cheetah tracking its prey, streaming hues of yellows, oranges, reds, and purples perform their hypnotizing pre-bedtime dance. Ahead, as dusk makes its appearance across the vastness, she drives seeking a resting place while watching night arrive amid colourful displays. Eventually darkening, the headlights seem to search her mind, understanding her need for respite, revealing silhouetted buildings evidencing not all is solitude. She feels drawn to a domed structure that looms in isolation as the crescent moon bursts its beams of light, and a single streetlight tries outshining distant celestial bodies to illuminate a gravel road-like turn-off.

Cora responds to her prompts, slowing before veering right, off the highway, and stopping at the fence with eyes focusing on the shapely architectural curiosity standing tall, imposing even in darkness, from its low-lying surroundings. Parking at the gateless fence, she shuts off the engine and inquisitively stares. Stepping out of her car with keys and phone, she wanders slowly around the building. Feeling an unseen presence in peace with her, she attempts a couple of pictures in the dark before locking herself in for the night. Cora’s prepared backseat becomes her bedroom each night. Comfortable aloneness under the shadowy domed abandoned church, she feels protected and quickly settles in sleep, feeling guarded by invisible hosts.

Hours pass with blackened prairie skies slowly awakening to the dawn of a new day while she peacefully sleeps. She feels warmth seeping through the front windshield as her eyes respond to an internal travelling clock. She reaches for her glasses. Wiggling free of her sleeping bag, she lifts her head to peer out the windows. Releasing the locks and slipping on shoes, she exits to stretch while looking around for signs of life. A few little houses and fields show no life as she investigates, first outside touching the asphalt like ‘siding’ that covers the outer walls with the appearance of brick. Walking the exterior several times with camera and phone, she looks at every angle, wooden, white paint peeling window frame and sill, missing glass, decorative trims, peaks and valleys, domed highlights, and board across a back door clearly worded, ‘No Entry.’ One paneless window reveals a beautiful sight.

Making her way to the simple white-painted, wood front door that rests ajar, she hesitates on the step. After several looks and trips up the two entrance stairs, she decides. Curiosity in respectful attitude, carefully her hand pulls it open just enough to glimpse inside the vestibule area. Dismay creeps inside as she slowly places one foot inside before her body follows. Papers scattered on the hardwood floor and graffiti on an inner door shock her sense of propriety. She feels drawn back in time and into a humble chapel with bright sky coloured walls and ceiling, coordinated with beige. She stands in awe under the dome inside this neglected place of worship and considers possible reasons for the abandonment and demise of this church.

While admiring the craftsmanship and artwork, her heart swells into a symbolic symphony of introspective silent contemplation. Empty indeed of present-day life, but with windows broken and the wind whistling through its sabbath air rendition of praises, she envisions a small ghostly congregation singing in tune with the choir. She listens carefully and notes the appropriateness of this place in time, feeling enveloped in the invisible singer upon the wind entering the window, bringing hymns to her mind. Insinger’s Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church has its own ‘insinger.’

Three weeks ago today (July 26, 2020), the above was my Sunday church experience. I am in a church, and within myself. My body, a symbolic temple for my spirit, a place meant for purity and cleanliness in thoughts, deeds, and actions feels at home, comfortable and welcome in my worshipful state of mind. Continually returning to my mind, I reflect on that nighttime stop and morning exploration that stays with me. Metaphorically, symbolically, and analogously, many remnants of my life, my present course, and future trail I am blazing need attention. Some areas require figurative cleaning, painting, repairing, removing, replacing, beautifying, and appreciative reverence in remembrance.

I love visiting abandoned places. I fall into a meditative mood where I find an analogous connection to the past and me. There seems to be an incredibly sad story here. I found legal documents scattered on the floor that designates this Greek Orthodox Church as a heritage building. There is also a transfer of ownership from the church. It was constructed in 1942 and listed as a landmark in the community. It looks like people were upset about something to have broken windows, left it in a mess with financial records and legal documents scattered on the floor. Perhaps it was vandalised? Forgotten? There is garbage on the stairs to the upper section.  And yet, there is intricate artwork remaining as evidence of a place of faith, community, and love. History, someone’s legacy lies in ruin, in need of loving hands to restore the hope once held. How sad! Does anyone care?

Who Do You Call?

Who do you call when in anguish, unseen, you cry?
When the world around you whispers your sigh
And it’s carried by the breeze from your draining heart.
When you feel empty, broken, torn apart,
Who do you call when in anguish, unseen, you cry?

The cool touch from a babbling brook refreshes my soul
When in grief or pain, I seek to be whole.
Streams from the blueness of my eyes may burst the dam
When in sadness, my heart aches, still I am
Immersing in the brook’s touch, refreshing my soul.

Who do you call when with delightful wings you fly?
When upwards you float with clouds in the sky,
Drifting dreamily of your life shifting ahead,
When you feel light as that billowing bed,
Who do you call when with delightful wings you fly?

Delicate, translucent suncatcher-like, my wings
Echo the sound waves of my heart as they sing.
When my perspective changes one view at a time
And I enter the realms ever sublime
The firmament records songs from delicate wings.

Who do you call when on eagle’s wings you do soar?
Cradled in nature, envisioning more.
Your life as it is, God’s gift, breath, future, and past,
When you know His awareness is always steadfast.
Who do you call when on eagle’s wings you do soar?

Still alone, in majestic flight, I hold tight
Within my awestruck, heart-pounding breast’s flight
A reverential sense of the creator’s plan.
Solemnity’s moments before my life began
Still alone, in majestic flight, I hold tight.
Vicki Nicholls © August 2020

The awe-inspiring stillness fills the, sometimes seemingly, emptiness with my recently realized impossible dreams trying to assert their hopeful reality. Full to overflowing with gratitude and love, I feel peace distilling upon me, flowing freely like a stream of mercy from my heart through arterial passageways. The swelling vessel of my drum-like beating heart stretches beyond its bounds. Emotionally reaching to mentally embrace the two men who fill my life with simplistically intricate patterns, colours of living and love, quilted into loss, heartbreak, and solemn joy, I feel comfortably secure on their invisible wings lifting, encouraging, cradling me. One deceased, the other my best friend, structure my life with an invaluable history as time changes like drifting clouds. Memories, a rich heritage of my past, bring tears of sadness and joyful bliss, mine to treasure. Though the hopes I held in them seem abandoned like the church, they remain a source of grateful wonderment for what was, and will always be a construct of remarkable beauty in the Potter’s hands, where this body of mortal clay, carefully molded stands as a legacy to faith, friendship, and love.

Life happens so does dispelling emptiness in aloneness. This introverted, fiercely private woman in personal thoughts, emotional expressions, family life, independence, and self-sufficiency I have known myself to be, is learning to walk one step at a time into dark empty places alone where, in these silent, contemplative spaces, I stand still to observe and listen. The sounds of silence, instrumental accompaniment in rhythm to my every breath and heartbeat, resonate with echoing from my past. I am loved, cared about, and find strength knowing prayers are uttered on my behalf during this season of my life’s voyage, unexpectedly devoid of cherished male companionship. While I earnestly yearn for the intimacy of love again, the emptiness in aloneness is actually not empty. The emptiness in aloneness shadows my body, mind, heart, always and forever part of me, filling my breath, life, dreams, and hopes in the light and the dark. I need this shadow and it needs me to dispel the emptiness in aloneness. Life is a daily gift. I have slowed right down to see what’s unseen, to feel my heart, to seek understanding my mind, to smell the proverbial roses blossoming along my voyage’s trail, and listen to sounds in silence and nature, the voices of peace and comfort, hope and love. What appears empty, really is not, it is space where air exists. Air is the breath of life.

When your life happens to feel empty in aloneness, where and how do you dispel the emptiness in aloneness, receive assurances you are not an empty shell of a mortal body, but filled with breath, spirit, life, dreams, a heritage and legacy?

You are not alone!

Life Happens… …so does Dispelling Emptiness in Aloneness, and Aw-ha Moments, Landscapes, so do . . ?, so . . ., Storms, Skeletons, Feet, Tents, Father/Daughter Memories, Missing Pieces, Waves, Gingerbread, What am I to do Now, and Choices.

Life Happens in Scriptural Musings. . . so do Rooftops, and Dioramas, Prayers, What Lack I Yet, Swords and Shields, Rescues, the Shepherd, and Faith and Wholeness.