Your Voice

Your voice is the temperature gauge

using the mercury of all you have seen and heard

of those who have harmed and saved you

an alchemical mix including your history

back to the first walk across the land

the first hut built of dry grass

your eyes wide as the saucers

that hadn't yet been invented

and the memory of a deep voice

directing you out of despair

calming the scream in your bowel

just as you were ready to split yourself open

in rage for all the times we let you down

when you were counting on us

to reach in for your bloodied arm

pull you up out of the pit

that had no steps or rocks to climb

and when we stop to think about it

we know we keep listening for the monster's roar

shuddering across the valley from mountains

too far and too high to climb

while your voice is so small and so close

we could begin to learn by listening

what could be done by someone

someone, anyone who hears

who has a hand to lift you up

and an arm to put around you

whenever your voice is ready

to ask for help.

Ring the Bells That Still Can Ring (Cohen)

The bells are saying this is humanity. Maybe not the actual bells but the invention and the hands, the arms, the mind and the heart that feel compelled to ring. It has its own language.

You can ring a bell when your loved ones get married because you feel joy that they have chosen a partner.

Or you can ring a bell to alert your tribe to oncoming danger.

Or you can ring about your breaking heart, or despair, or grief.

Or you can ring about justice because you know that justice is right. Or injustice when you know that injustice is wrong.

Or gratitude, because if you are not grateful for anything in your life, then you know your life is broken, and the pain is too much to bear alone. And if that is the case then you can ring about pain.

You don't actually need a bell to do any of this - you can simply speak the words to whomever is close by. How they respond is not your fault and you are not obliged to change them.  You have a stake in this moment, but your are not in charge of it.

You are not just a dancing statue on a cathedral in a town square, turning unconsciously from the gears below. You are an organic spirit.

If there were no bells or songs or shouts we would be no more than numbers on a spread sheet, and after we die we will have no voice beyond the memories of those we leave behind.

"Ring the bells that still can ring" is from Leonard Cohen's song Anthem