the winds of the heavens dance

It has been a whole year since I last spoke with you in this place. That hot summer, motherhood was on my mind, as it is again now, mainly because the other member of my immediate family--my husband Julian--left our troubled life in May, 2023.

But I won't wail about grief, with all its complications. I've discovered that it is much more common than I'd been privileged to understand. What I want to express is something I am learning about grief's antidote, love. In preparing for my first marriage, my intended and I decided to use a quote from Khalil Gibran:

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls." Read more of Gibran's poem here.

On reflection, my understanding of "spaces in your togetherness" was limited at that time. I understood it somewhat literally, as creating distance from the other party, in order that they might go ahead and develop their unique talents and learn from the universe on their own, unencumbered by someone else's ideas and perspectives on what might be the best path to take on their journey towards the second life. I saw 'space' as a kind of independence; a separation of our mental, emotional and spiritual lives rather than a joining together.

But how can love--the substance that holds our spiraling galaxies in order--be defined by what separates, rather than what binds us?

I realize now that I was taking Gibran's opening line out of context. I had memorized those first seven words, but not the next 10 plus 10 plus 13 and so on. Perhaps if I had meditated on the second sentence in particular, I would have come to a different conclusion. Or maybe I had to go through a second marriage, and the grief of that second separation, to understand the hidden meanings of the dancing winds of heaven.

"Who feels it knows it, Lord..." as Gibran's Jamaican counterpart, Bob Marley, sang. I believe this to be a proverb with wider implications than the scope of the song. In the context of Gibran's deep thoughts on love, it seems to me to indicate that until one has experienced the kind of love he describes, one cannot know what it is, or create it from nothing. This is the confounding mystery of life, and a reason for poets to strive to express the inexpressible knowledge of love, and of love's unquenchable source.

And so I say to my beloved, "Let there be togetherness in this space between us. Open your soul to the healing winds of heaven. Let this bondage be what tethers you to freedom. Sing a new song, love, sing anew, my song."