Let me tell you a story. When I came into the world, it was too loud, too scary, too overwhelming. There were too many bright lights. Too many people. Too many faces and too many voices that I could not comprehend. I did’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be me. I didn’t want to be present. 

This got worse when I was bullied. I fled to the horses. I fled into fantasy novels. When I couldn’t gallop away, I ran away. I danced until I dropped. I ran to the point of exhaustion. I stuffed myself, starved myself, drank more booze than all the bards of the medieval halls put together, took all manner of drugs. I flirted with death. Death flirted back. He saved me. 

And I ran to Him in the Otherworld and He brought me back. I flew to Him in the Otherworld and He brought me back. I swam to Him across the oceans of the Deep and the starry sea of the Heavens and took Him a star. And He brought me back. And He said, “You belong here, now, in the present.”

And He gave me a monastery and made me a nun and married me. “If you can’t be present for yourself, be present for me, now I live within your heart.”

And I was present. But I still couldn’t be me. So He trampled down the monastery and He tore off my habit and left me naked with myself. 

And it’s hard, so hard, being present with this body. With these senses. With this pain. With these memories. But this is the quintessence of healing.

The visions of the Otherworld have their value. The molten stars. The silver spaceships. The serpents who swallow us. The hounds who tear us apart. The gentle mothers. The tender soul parts who come back, childish, laughing and smiling, to our astonishment, to our dismay, as we fear to hold them. For what place have joy and tenderness and love in this cruel, cruel world?

The visions of the Otherworld have their value but only if we can integrate them into Thisworld and it is hard, so hard, when there is no room for dragons and goddesses with big bellies and laughing, smiling, children. 

It is hard. But this is the work. The journeying is easy. This part is harder. 

Presence is like a brittle star that has fallen from the sky of the Otherworld and become a seed that must grow to see and feel and experience all the pain, all the joy, all the trembling, crumpling anxiety, all the fear of this failing world.

It is a gift of the Otherworld’s King. It holds more worth than all His treasures – the trays of fruit and meat, the over-spilling mead-cups, the heaps of gold.

Help me to be present 
for You, for me, 
this day, all days, 
in every now, 
Immortal Lord.