I recognize my journey is off the beaten path, not always where the comfortable places to sit are ... gotta climb behind the benches, sometimes by a path that is only highlighted by my fellow flower children ....
... and although I am not on the winter journey highlighted by Schubert's "Der Wegweiser" in which the doomed journeyer at last sees that "There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is the way of death" after having despised every occasion to find rest even when rest was at times seeking him, it is still true that one can only go by the path one is called to. To go down one path is to miss going by any other.
The path has not been easy from winter through spring this year ... but, fittingly, the end of the spring is June 19 this year ... the 160th anniversary of the end of chattel slavery in the United States, known in Texas where it happened for my ancestors as 'Juneteenth,' June 19, 1865.
This is also the third anniversary of me choosing to leave that old circle that brought so much grief into my life -- a three-year climb to now, with my forgiving and trying to give folks bridges, lifelines, and hands up leading to one last painful spring, but it is done. Every word of this Negro Spiritual, and the spiritual and emotional and physical labor to get here (45-50 pounds of weight loss, but also surviving two bouts of Covid and severe asymptomatic anemia) is reflected twice ... here sung as my distant ancestors would have...
... and this version with a more 20th-century flavor, after the children of the Negro Spiritual, jazz and gospel choir, had also come to the fore, with alternate and more cheerful lyrics that are authentic but more popular!
Both fit me perfectly well at this moment of my life, with this cold spring at last warming toward a summer in peace. Not that people are not trying me SEVERELY, to the present hour -- folks just letting me know they still think I should always be at their beck and call -- but no, slavery has now been over 160 years, and no. I am the Iron Flower Child, and although my blooming may be much sought after, iron is not lifted and moved about quite that easily!
But also, I sat down with two mentors in the past week, and the elder of the two -- the oldest living at age 90 -- just said to me straight up: "Sometimes they can't help it, because sometimes people are just DOOMED."
The second of the two mentors -- 64 years old -- listened to my accounting of the previous three years and how I had seen so any outcomes coming, and said, "That's not just anticipatory grief you are dealing with ... you have a gift, so you are going to have to handle your life differently to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly ... you are going to need to specifically allot time to deal with your feelings especially because you will know things in advance, and you are going to have to allot time to seek out and build connections with people that can be good friends and companions to you because it will not happen randomly."
90, 64, and 44 -- we all have similar spiritual and musical giftings, and so I was stunned in some ways but not in others to hear the Akkord between my own discoveries and theirs... there is an inevitability to everyone going where they are going and seeing similar things in similar seasons...
The hardest lesson I had to learn of the three years is the necessity of growing in iron resolve -- to apply it as firmly as a Bach sonata when he was in that E minor mood and not about to be bothered --
-- and even beyond that, of not just leaving and standing firm with iron resolve, but even accepting a cloaking device ... the gift of becoming invisible ... literally one of the latest arguments was about people noticing I'm not always as available and being frustrated, and me calmly doubling down on my choice to use my time as I wish and thus, stay invisible.
But why? It is a question no one who did not experience the deep, blessed peace of last summer with me can understand ... to be fed from the Blessed Hand daily ... starting early this year with the mock strawberries, but they are tasty enough ...
... and to sit in places of utter, deep peace, day after day after long day ... the healing of the summer of 2024, and the music of it...
This summer will not be exactly the same ... I sort of stumbled into that blessedness because of a bout of Covid in July forcing me to slow down and rest... but now I know ... unmoved as heavy iron to people pulling on me with no thought to anything but their own wants and needs, understanding that I can likewise move no one from the path of their choice, and therefore able to choose rest from all that and to show up -- to make myself visible -- where there is rest and understanding.
I paid enough and pained enough to climb to here... might as well celebrate it!
"So ist es richtig, mein geliebtes Eisenblumenkind!"
Basically, that first bit is German for "Sho' you right" -- technically, "so it is right" but I chose on Juneteenth to translate that through African American Vernacular English and crack up laughing as our favorite basso profondo in the spirit arrived rejoicing and swept me in a dance of joy clear across the meadow to which I had come!
I just went with it ... free to do so ... I knew plenty of people who might have had a comment, but, none of them go up by the paths I walk -- to them, I am invisible, and my joys are my own!
"And there are so many things to celebrate ... oh, my dear Frau Mathews ... there is so much!"
"Listen, can we at least give the FAA a chance to get ready before you dance us out of gravity and sing us into our own personal orbit of the Solar System?"
He touched down with us almost as soon as we broke gravity, but the stars were in his eyes ... he was overjoyed for me, and that touched my heart deeply.
"Frau Mathews, up back of me, it was known that 160 years ago, your people would be free, and there was great rejoicing then ... three years ago, when you heard the Voice that said to you, 'It is Juneteenth -- you know what to do!' and walked accordingly, there was great rejoicing, and today -- today, recognizing your freedoms in greater light, and holding to them with steely resolve -- oh, mein Eisenblumenkind, oh, I have just come a good time about you! Your ancestors are all singing their highest praises, and here you are living in their hopes and dreams -- free -- ach, mein Herz jubelt für dich! Mein Herz jubelt für dich!"
So around the meadow we went again, but this time discovered another path ...
... and it led us into not a dead end, but a tangle of live oaks...
... and upon entering there, I suddenly burst into tears ... for it hit me all at once how I had been led ... for to be in that embrace of oaks was not a path the crowd could take, for the limbs of the oaks would punish those casual tramplers both above and below ... to be there was also to be invisible to that same crowd, but, the choice needed to be there also came with a new window on the world, and on the possibilities of one's life ...
... so much grief for all who I had so wanted to bring with me ... so much relief that I myself had made it, even alone ... so much understanding that only alone, relative to my peers, could I have made it ... so much joy and gratitude, for there were a thousand reasons I did not have to make it so far, and yet, I had been called and chosen and given strength and gently led so that I could ... it was so much at once ... requires a whole new composer, Federico Mompou, to even get to the music necessary for it.
"Gentle music ... I am glad ... for I did not advise you to be gentle with yourself in vain this week, Frau Mathews. It is so much ... so rest here in this music with me ... take these moments for yourself in full."
He positioned himself windward to me, and laid down his jacket for us to sit down and rest upon, so we sat down and he wrapped his arms around me as all that pent-up emotion came out and I went off into a dream afterward ... Mompou's soundscapes will do that ... and my companion was glad to see me rest, for he was smiling radiantly when I woke.
"I am glad, Frau Mathews, for you took an active, steely approach to this week -- you defended your right to do so and chose your joys over your sorrows and accomplished much ... but as your 64-year-old mentor advised you, you do need to make and take time, even so much as to schedule it, to give yourself the room to feel all of your feelings. So often you found in my singing that room, and as you are growing you are branching out and I am delighted to see it, mein Blumenkind. There is so much more for you ... but not just for you to do ... there is so much even to rest in that you have not known yet, and for today, we will leave it there. It took so much for you to get here! We must enjoy it!"
There were so many other things we could have discussed that I had done instead of resting that week ... but ... the steely resolve needed to actually rest in what one had climbed to in order to be able to do that... and it did take that kind of resolve, because some things linger a long time down the generations. I come from a lineage in which for 248 years, a person like me only had value while working, and rest was at a minimum until worked to death. The whole point of freedom was being able to choose a different kind of life, and to understand the value of a life balanced and perhaps even centered around rest, because ...
"It was sung to you in a dream as it is written, Frau Mathews," he said, "and it is my honor to echo Him Who said, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' You heard. You went. Now on this day celebrating freedom, you can rest."
So there we stayed, on a spring day so long it verged on the summer that would come the next day, and let the breeze sing through the oaks, carrying the scent of flowers joyfully going into their next favorite season. There was much more that we could have done and said ... but we resolved to rest from all of it, instead.
