Little Black Book Index
Opus Interiorem
– Latin For –
Inner Work
Inner Work…though it is a deeply personal matter, it is not necessarily a private matter: inner work can be helped along in community. Indeed, doing inner work together is a vital counterpoint to doing it alone. Left to our own devices, we may delude ourselves in ways that others can help correct. But how a community offers such help is a critical question. We are surrounded by communities based on the practice of “setting each other straight” – an ultimately totalitarian practice bound to drive the shy soul into hiding.
~Parker Palmer
My Unfolding Narrative
Our family story hinges on the principle from Genesis 50:20. “Even though the enemy planned evil against us, God planned good to come of it.”
Welcome to my heart’s echo, the solicitation of my hope that all who seek illumination and understanding may find it. I offer you, the reader, an invitation to follow the path on which I have labored. This solemn narrative has developed as I have developed, ripened as I have cultivated my thoughts, and effloresced as I poured it out of my heart into written word. This is an interpretation of our family history, chronicling my experiences and perceptions of our story. There was a time when I possessed little interest in our family heritage or who our ancestors were as I wanted to escape the emptiness. I held my history in shame as I longed for something far more. There was, however, no escape. What I would later discover is how profoundly our family shame had unknowingly breached my psyche. My mother was committed to protecting me from the worst in life but shame is a danger that is nearly impossible to detect and identify for it lives in the shadows. There were ignoble attempts on the part of my mother, uncles, and aunt; their efforts vacillating between defending and accusing their father, a man who had been justly sentenced to prison. Who could blame them for attempting to build an impregnable fortress around their own minds and reputation? They were already carrying the pain of their own abandonment when, as children, their father ran off to Texas with another woman. What my ancestors never processed emotionally and spiritually was the unfinished business that was beckoning for a day of atonement.
The poem I am about to read is called Free Diver. It was written in 2007 when I began to open up my heart to doing inner work.
Free Diver
The cavernous
The blue
So dark
It was almost black
Trapped this deep
Desire
to be
transported
Up
Out
The subterranean
HIDDEN
in the corner of the sea
Generational chains
That had rusted
Around my ankles
and arms
Were unlocked
A voice spoke
No longer –
live in the depths
Emerging
to the surface
Ever…so slowly
Adjusting
my sight
and breathing
The atmospheric pressure
Had compressed
my eyes and lungs
The Free Diver who came from air Leads me
Crystal Anzalone
November 8, 2007
Crystal
The reticulated feminine imagination of Firefly Horizons and aesthetic architect of its contextual nature. Crystal establishes artful metaphor and metonymy in interpretative language to convey abstract questions to easy answers. Through sovereign reflection, she initiates imaginative beginnings. Read more about Crystal • Articles by Crystal
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