To me, healing comes in the form of restoring connections. Death happens when you become separate from the world of life. I believe that death, like life, is only temporary. To be resurrected, you have to find a way back. You have to find a connection between the other side and this one. I spent a long time in death before I woke up again.

I’ve been wounded before by people who said they love me in order to convert me to their set of beliefs. Right from the start their love was conditional, tainted. I was deceived by their good intentions. They live in a world where truth is singular and limited and those who didn’t hold their beliefs were damned to eternal suffering. There was no unity in their world, only a constant division upheld by their own self-righteousness. They worshipped the dead words written by dead men, and claimed that it was the eternal truth of the living god. They convinced me that I was a sinner for having certain feelings of love, and I was naÔve enough to believe them.

For a long time, I was in a dark tunnel with no light in sight. At times it felt like the whole world was against me, ready to chew me up and regurgitate my remains on the rocks for the insects to eat. I don’t know how I got out of it, but I felt that a higher power was at work to see me through, a power that cannot be contained by the syllable “God,” or any one word or language or thought. I see it now in the Sun and in the green leaves wet with dew at dawn. I feel it when I look up at the star-stained velvet of a clear night, imagining countless worlds with old beginnings and timeless stories preserved in some cosmic database beyond the edge of space. Perhaps I’m remembering my own spiritual beginning.

Ignition.

I am a ray of light traveling through space. I crash into the blue Earth and break into a million pieces. One beam lands on the leaves of a tree, merging with it in an orgasmic scream too silent for insects to hear.

Inside this tree body, I live a slow and dreamy existence, shedding leaves like a snake sheds its skin. They cut me down and made me into a stake. A witch is nailed upon me. I burn with the anger of a misplaced sun, biting into the flesh of my occupant.

I am the ashes blown away by the wind. I circle the earth for a few centuries, eventually landing in a garden of vegetables. I become spinach. Hands surround me and pull me out of the earth. A young mother somewhere eats me a week later, and I become part of a new life.

Fragments.

Pieces of songs and memories.

Coming together in the vessel of spirit we call a human being.

I want to become a child again, carefree and so filled with the joy of life that the shadows of pain and death hardly matter. I want to remember that time when the world was filled to the brim with mystery and wonder, when every breath was a conversation with all that moved.

My lover waits for me in dreams. Sometimes he appears to me as an angel — winged, muscular, and beautiful, with strong arms ready to carry me up to the heavens. Sometimes my lover looks like Eve, the first human, with skin as black as infinite space and eyes brighter than Sirius. Her supple hips beckon me, ready to make love and babies and galaxies and solar systems. Sometimes my lover is the Sun, shooting out waves of love and energy with ecstatic joy, bringing Life to his beloved sister, the Earth. Memories of past lives blend together in this dream world. I am a soul ready for love again.

The Darkness covers the world, and I know it’s there because I feel it in me. I felt its power whenever I got angry. I felt it whenever I wanted to hurt or destroy something. I felt it when I think that I’m better or worse than others. I felt it in the form of fear, for the Darkness is the creator of fear. It is in me, but I’m more wary of it now. I see it in other people, too. The Darkness wants to convince me that there are evil people in the world. That’s a lie. It is only the Darkness working in people who are not strong enough to resist it. My lover, the Sun, gives me strength. The Darkness cannot stand the light of the Sun.

My lover comes to me, this time, human, male, and well-equipped. We make love on a green grassy hill out in the wilderness. The Sun shines down on us approvingly. The wind carries the scent of seasons past, present, and future. It flows from my lungs into my lover’s and out again into the vast expanse of creation. A river of sweat connects our bodies together. I feel the oneness of me and my lover, of earth and sun and infinite space. I have no idea who’s making love to who, or if it even matters anymore. We are one, as the universe is one, as all living things are one. Amen.