The Sacred Warrior
What holds me back now is not fear but ignorance. How to know what I’m looking for, how to be guided.
If I get a little singed, wounded, I need a place to retreat to and yi-nafash*. Yi-nafash is always possible. Nothing is destroyed without being replenished. Nothing.
What you need to destroy that black poison, that tragedy within you that will hurt, peeling that off your skin is like pulling a bandaid off an open wound. But I will cleanse you with hyssop, and you shall be cleansed.
That is my vow. And God will not punish me if I don’t achieve it because I shall achieve it. God is not my punisher. God is my enabler. Fly like an arrow, God whispers in my ear, beyond anywhere I have gone.
I’m going to put my feelers out into the city, to try to sense the web of paths raised up amongst the fens*. There’s higher ground, rock solid beneath your feet. You don’t have to sink up to your neck to go in there. At least, not yet. You’ll just go forward, looking right, looking left, making sure nothing is lurking. When you find what needs to be saved, you will throw out a life line and pull the mermaid out of the marsh.
And she will be transformed into a living girl. She will no longer be drowning, smothered twenty thousand leagues under the sea. You will get no more than your feet wet. There’s no tidal wave. The storm has passed, the storm that laid waste to this city. You’re safe. You won’t be blown away. Remember, Sue? You’re grounded on this earth.
And you will find that mermaid, because she cries out to you with love and you can trust. You can trust ! trust that you will triumph over evil, like Durga with the lotus flower as her weapon. And you will purge this sorrow, this grief, this dark film that keeps you under water. I’m not afraid anymore, says the mermaid. I’m not afraid to come up. I don’t know how to breathe on land. I’m waiting for you, my Redeemer, to rescue me.
I don’t need a map. I have the hands of a dowser. I find lost things. In the book I am reading*, the heroine can find lost things, but she doesn’t do it anymore. That’s the book I have to create. The woman who finds what has been abandoned and given up for dead. The truth is waiting to be rescued.
The mermaid has the head of a fish, but the eyes and coloring of a woman, with long undulating seaweed-like hair. How will we grant you arms and legs? Well, God turned fish into amphibians, nu? You will crawl out, my dear. It’s not hand against stone, like Rilke failed to penetrate*. It’s a magical barrier between living underwater and inhabiting the earth. Just put those two little newt feet up on the land. Stick your head out and take a breath. And try to push that breath of pure air through those gills. Stand up. You’re no longer under the weight and pressure of all that water, greater than an elephant’s foot on your chest. Now you’re sniffing the air. You’ve never smelled anything before. It’s putrid in this city, but it is good to smell. It is being alive, alive-o. That’s what you have to look forward to.
The mermaid says to me, I will join you as a warrior, your loyal knight, your consigliere. Will we hunt down the evil royal couple? Or just try to banish the spell?
I’m not sure we could find them. I’m not sure they are still alive.
I just realized that being under water, you cannot breathe. Like when someone tries to smother you. And yet you lived! You formed gills! You have reclaimed your lungs. Your job for the week: Learn To Breathe!
And turn yourself into a Warrior. BECAUSE WE WILL NEED OUR WEAPONS! We will avenge our precious honor. The promise we had, which we were brought into this world to fulfill, that was God’s wish, and my parents thwarted it. They disobeyed the will of God, and they will be avenged. To purge the earth of this evil, they will be slaughtered before they are born again. There will be anger. There will be pain and blood. I will hear their screams. And I will rejoice, watching them die!
So bone up, little fish. Bone up. Learn to stand tall and walk again. Yes, you. They cut off your legs, they cut off your arms, they cut off the very air to your lungs. This week you will be born again. God has commanded his angels to lift you up lest your foot stumble* on any obstacle on this noble path.
For we are the warriors, the sacred warriors. And we will win.
*________________________________
* Ex 31:17: Literally, re-soul: On the seventh day, God rested and renewed his soul.
*From a book series by Alys Clare. A healer solves mysteries in the 11th Century.
*From Rilke, translated by Robert Bly, Pushing Through:
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock, …
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.
*Psalm 91:11-13: For he will command his angels to guard you in all your paths.On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder; the lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.