SEARCHING

The more I search within the more convinced I become that my life exceeds the limits that I alone have imposed. Being Black and American and female are taking on new meaning, beyond the borders of this shore. I am, at least for the moment, concerned less with the "Black Agenda" and more with efforts of peace. How can I, within my soul and within my home, remove myself and the man I love and the children I have birthed from the flow of anger and violence and into the flow of peace? How can I aid in reducing human suffering? Here, in the United States, I have learned a language that few understand. I understand the etiology of heart disease, HIV, AIDS, cancer, celiac disease, lupus. I know what the research means, I understand the treatment modalities. I know the meaning of a CD-4 count and a gastrograffin study. The latest research does not elude me. I am, too, a writer, a thinker, a speaker, a counselor. I have held hands as last breaths were taken. I have been washed with the warmth of Spirit leaving the room as the body slips into a cold state. As a nurse, I have wrapped my arms around the shoulders of people whom I've never known, hoping to help in the healing of their suffering. In other words, Spirit within me calls for awakening...to use the tools I have been given for a greater purpose than for what I have been striving toward.

I gravitate here and find myself, a moment later, over here, excited that the work I want to do is indeed being done. How to connect to that work, I ask Spirit, and what to offer? Who to call? First (and continually) the inner work, the continued path toward enlightenment, for one can only give from what one already has, not from what one is trying to get. I do know this: change is afoot. The ceiling is lifting, blowing free in vast new ways. Writing is a branch of a very large tree, the tree of my Life; a platform that I must use also for the healing of human suffering. I trust that I will find the way, or, rather, that the way will be revealed to me in right time. For now, the inner work.

---A.