the howling of the soul

the howling of the soul...

...always, it seems, as the wyoming winter wind whips across the prairie, i am drawn to wonder about her...i wonder how she is...what she ended up doing...did she heal...enough?

i remember, one day in a session...she was so quiet, emotionally frozen...weeping softly...it seemed that any movement i did could startle her beyond repair...in her silence, i thought of a scripture story...a jesus story, one that today, eludes me as i am writing...something about gentle compassion, i am sure...something about the yearning and healing of a soul....

so, i quietly say, "i am going to move to my bookshelf...get my new testament and read you a story"...in whispering movements, i walk across the room and take my favorite, wrinkled paperback new testament and let the pages fall open to this now forgotten story...i remember reading to her...wanting her to just stay still and know...what? that she is more than the anguish she feels...that she is accepted just as she feels...that someone, maybe me, maybe jesus, maybe herself most of all, will accept her wounded, yearning soul to become alive again...

that is how she described herself, not alive, but dead...in her self...

and, now in this writing, right now, i suddenly remember the jesus story!!

the story that i was called to read to her! lazarus...the dead guy that jesus rose from the dead, that jesus cried about because, it seems, jesus was a good friend of lazarus, maybe even a cousin, i hear...and, the story goes, that when jesus heard about his friend dying, jesus wept...that's all...

just wept,

simple, painful, beautiful tears...

jesus wept...

"the shortest verse in the bible", we were taught in sunday school...

of course, as the scripture story goes, it does not end here, or there...that jesus broke the rules of life and death...that jesus went to the tomb, perhaps crying...sobbing...

jesus bellows, howling from his soul, his grief...

"lazarus, come here!!"

...and the folks around, family and friends, yelled back, "no! he stinketh! for he has been dead three days!"...and it did not matter...

the rules of death, and the rules of family and friends did not matter...

lazarus came forth, from the howling voice of a loving friend and cousin...

"unwrap him!" jesus yelled...for he was all wrapped up, as a mummy...

unable to freely move...breathe...live...

one deep winter night when she could not sleep, when, even in indiana where she lived, the wind blew fierce through the forests and across the farmlands...she wrote in her journal, "i can't sleep...all i can hear is the howling of the wind...and it feels like my soul...the howling of my soul..."

haunting, haunting...and that was near twenty years ago...

and the howling of the wind blows across this january land...bringing wonders and prayers for her and for all who know what it is like to die and come back again...

before i left indiana to come here to this prairie, she had renamed herself...yes, gave herself a new name...a new life from her tomb...she created a new family, new friends, new rules to live by...she called herself (and this is not her full new name, for her privacy and identity are preserved)

"free"...

yes, free...

and to her, i bow...