For the next three days, I am writing the posts for the 54-Day Mysteries of the Dark Novena at Way of the Rose. I’ll post those here on the blog, and do separate posts for the daily November poems.

Mysteries of the Darkness Novena

Day 39. Glorious Mysteries:

Oh how the rhythm of these three days keeps me grounded, knowing there is within the Joyful Mysteries the shadow of Sorrows to come, and within the Sorrows, the seed of Glory waiting.

Sometimes it drives me a little crazy, if I am to be honest. Today I want to wallow in the Sorrows, rage and cry, feel all the Big and Overwhelming Feelings. And sometimes during the Sorrowful Mysteries, I want to keep riding the hopeful waves of discovery and fresh awareness of Joy, or rush to rise up from the grave on the day of Glory and shout I’m Back! Some days I dread the shadows in the valleys of Sorrow.

Yet the days roll onward inexorably, reminding me how the shadows bring definition to the sunshine of joy, how the glory lingers all through the cycle, to offer the hope of comfort on the most sorrowful of days.

And so today I leap into the joyful sunlight, remembering that I am Alive! Knowing I have work to do. And deeply aware that sorrow will always cycle back to find me, even when my soul clenches with the thought of it.

And what if the Soul has trouble catching up, caught in the sloughs of the sorrowful path? When I get stuck in sorrow as I am today, resisting the glory—I gather my tools. I crowd-source ideas from friends on social media (“What do you do when you feel this way?”), I take a little longer at my morning grounding, sigh between Hail Marys, count the shades of red on the hillside, remember my dreams.

In last night’s dream, I was nursing other people’s starving babies, though I am in my time of croning. I felt the latch, felt the milk drop, felt the satisfaction that this one—at this moment—would be provided for.

Instead of answering how I can step from the shadowed pathway of the sorrow-road into the glorious light of rebirth, my dream asks me what sustenance I can find within myself to offer outward. Instead of always asking how I will be sustained to make the journey out of the tomb, today I am being asked to find that sustenance within myself and offer it outward. I do not know yet what form this will take. 

We are complex organisms, we humans, and we can carry within us simultaneously the joy and the sorrow, the tragedy and the glory. Open the bowl of your heart ever wider to take it all in.

Wake up! A new day is dawning! Be ready for the task of building a new world. The sorrows will always be with us. There will always be another child needing sustenance and protection, another soul to care for. And just as surely will the work of awakening be arriving on the train of the coming day, followed by the promise of fresh surprises on the horizon.

What wakes you up today and makes your senses come alive?

What draws your spirit from the shadowy valleys and underground passages of sorrow into the light of a new day?

What glory can you pass along, like a life-line, to your neighbors today?