From Tracie: Longing

Monday, July 08, 2013

Longing

I feel it in my dreams. Not the ones I struggle to allow when I am awake - the ones that come in my sleep when my mind is allowed to wander and visit old thoughts and snippets of memories.

I am visited in those dreams by faces from long ago. I visit houses and places that only exist in memory and old photographs. My mind combines the two together.

Sometimes I am old, sometimes young. If I allow my mind to wander, if I do not use the full force of my lucid dreaming abilities, I will continue down those old paths - the same, yet different.

Nothing makes sense, and everything makes sense. It is the way of dreams. They find the longing in your heart, and magnify it.

I see myself on those hazy paths.

I could be strong, but I give into the failure.

I could be sure, but I give into the frazzle.

I could be safe, but I give into the fear.

When I can not stop myself from thinking it through any longer, when I have to analyze the moments through the haze, I see the longing.

It is there. Staring at me. As physically imposing as a mountain, and more real than the haze around me. The longing for more, less, different.

I could reach out my left hand and touch it. But I do not. I know one touch will give it power, and it will carry me off. Carry me beyond the safety of the haze and the surety of dreams I can control at will. The longing will draw me to places unknown, and I am not ready for that. Yet. Maybe ever.

Brennan Manning quote

For now, I wait on that hazy path. I search for the center of my soul, the quiet place, and listen for the beat of the Rabbi's heart. In my dreams, I allow the longing to stand close for the day I might be ready to follow it into the unknown. As I wake, I feel its presence behind me. Hand stretched out. Waiting.

11 comments:

  1. Beautiful Tracie. Your writing is so visual and amazing.-Ashley

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  2. Very evocative. Can't wait to see where that path might lead...

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  3. Well said. We long for more, yet surety holds us back. Evocative, as Considerer said!

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  4. So beautiful. "I could be strong, but I give into the failure." Poetry.

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  5. I love the image of feeling longing, but instead sitting and waiting in the present. Not grasping, just being. Lovely.

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  6. Tracie, what a poignant post. "I could be safe, but I give into the fear." I can relate to that, because feeling of fear is more familiar than the feeling of safety.

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  7. This is so very well expressed! I love how you painted that visual image with your words!

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  8. You write so beautifully and poetically.

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  9. Oh boy have I been there!!! There's a dong by Sarah groves that fits this well one line says for the places I have been do not fit the way I'm going....or something like that...

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  10. I've been down there before. Beautiful words!

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  11. Such a thought provoking and beautiful post!

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