Wearing the shroud of the silence of the recently departed, we sit consumed by mystery and shadow. The very air, quickened by new residents, wants a new attention we are unprepared to offer. A certain boundary, at once visible and shattered, no longer comforts with familiar parameters, but rather shrinks and grows, alternately and instantaneously, baffling the senses.

Whether midnight or midday, light suddenly takes on a new countenance, and appears foreign, alien, newborn or totally decrepit. In being strange to the most ordinary of elements we become strange to ourselves and, not knowing the face in the mirror we turn away, and for some length of time no longer indulge in examining the odd other which keeps looking back.

Walking takes on an effort of proportion that requires thought, forgotten thoughts from the infancy of memory, a door long closed with no handle. Yet there it is, how does one re-member mobility? And then accomplish it? But being called by another, perhaps whose need is greater, we push through forgetfulness into activity, and watch in wonder as the air recedes, and lets us through, into the kitchen, or den, or study, to heed the call of the other’s beckoning voice.
But in moving through the air around us, that had become a brief but ephemeral shield, what was held by our inner will begins to quiver and crack; and thru the cracks the ordinariness attempts to re-enter. Holding it at bay for the sake of the sacred veil that has been lifted, staying close to the light that lives, so many hearts succumb, and call this grief.

Could not it though, be named after the more subtle depth of the hearts’ sense? Why not say rather, we have to go through this time of Beauty, and we will, in time, “get over it” and life will go on as usual and “get back to normal” when we have recovered. For indeed we are in these threshold moments entering into the terrifying realm of the country beyond the veil, the domain of Beauty, the entire rest of the world we choose, in ordinary life, never to behold.

The beauty of the newly dead (or newly born, for that matter) creates the very air about us anew, coloring clarity with sanctity, washing pain with invisible possibility. Beauty wakens, and in one moment, this finite event unleashes that which has been given into all that will ever be. As we see on a regular basis, “two become one” so now we bear witness as one becomes every and all and we can yet bear the wholeness if we would/could but allow it in the littleness of our uneducated, uncreative imagination. This is school, the lesson has begun, the teacher is presenting the best-prepared lesson ever given, and giving freely, asks us to go beyond imitation – beyond understanding – beyond explication. Here in this class we must co-create the falling away of ‘mere’ personality and learn to read the wholeness in the up-rising of spirit, from temporal to eternal, the body of the beloved one becomes at once memory and me, all and everything, complete and nothing.

Baffling reason, the paradox loses us soon enough, and we turn away from Beauty for the world of secure, knowable patterns and fears, rhythms and reassurances. We look back to what is pretty and safe, happily abandoning the open heart for the heart that can endure the world as it happens. We successfully traverse the temporal plane of the threshold experience and re-enter ordinary existence with only glimmers of having been so close to beauty, which sparkles up to haunt us or remind us of that just beyond the pale light, so close we could smell it if we were but downwind.

Wrenched thus out of Beauty it is often as painful as being cast into its realm, and something there is always calling, calling to the soul; filling the soul with a longing so deep we often gauge our sanity by our relation to this longing. Desire itself seems paltry beside the immensity of this longing – or at least would appear so, would we but allow the feeling free reign inside our narrow breast. Such a small space takes on glacial magnitude for expanse and depth, degree and intensity, pressing on toward horizons of unimaginable distance, too far for our short eyes to follow, too far for our feint hearts to fathom.

Stay. Stay here by this stream of living time, whispers the assailed heart; closer, more real, more soothing, the realm of the threshold; where death and birth abide as sisters, and hold the essence of Beauty in the laps of the angels that guard and protect those who traffic here.

But we do not stay. We pass through, some quickly, others with stately tread, some with blundering feet of clay.

Beauty is perceptible here because here She is awake, resonant, recognizable to our ignorance, our ig-norance and greed. Even the ignorance and greed of the ego. Beauty spreads out and generously invites the whole of the earthly, the whole of the heavenly to come together and be manifest in this moment of being called.

Here, Beauty becomes us, we become beauty if we but act in her activity, and let our hearts be taught by her whom we suspect to be present, but usually only acknowledge superficially, momentarily. So close to becoming real, we ignore the Beauty which would be our guide, and sink into grief which foreshadows our re-entry into the unreal. In the unreal the world is filled with need, loss, pain, worry, anxiety, fear…all the characters that blind us to Beauty. (Even simple distraction, busy-ness, entertainment, maybe better referred to as en-trane-ment.) These ones who bind our hearts with iron bands and hold us to some false treadmill or grindstone that keeps our face turned away, are the ones that would have us believe in beauty only as the pretty and the prettily presented.

However, there is true Beauty that permeated every particle of matter and every aspect of the invisible worlds. This Beauty is the mother of Jesus. Mary’s beauty is the beauty of the one who never takes her eyes off of God. In seeing Him, she does not NOT see the “real” world, but truly sees, through Him, through His eyes, the whole and the wholeness of the world and all that is. Imagine….to see through the eyes of God. In our most vivid, living, creative imagination, as the heart awakens through the teaching of those near us who cross the threshold, we can encounter Beauty and Her Deeds, and come nearer to bearing the deed which is Beauty into the world. Mary is a model of being this kind of Beauty, for she is never not seeking to see God…she always turns her face to Him.

In the stillness of obedience, (obedience which is not servile, but rather the joy of devotion, who is the child of Love)…in the stillness of obedience, the countenance of Mary met the fullness of the face of God. And she turned not away, but in humility and wonder, only lowered her eyes a bit, to listen more deeply to all His Love for her through her heart. Love filled the fullness of her being so completely that she became assent. Glory entered her being transforming her and the whole of the world forevermore. And she never, not once, turned away…but steadfastly lived and lives a constancy of meeting the waiting, patient eyes of God. Even when we look away – She looks on for us. And so is everlasting Beauty, because of the Wholeness, which She ever sees.

Wearing the shroud of the silence of the recently departed, we sit consumed by the mystery and beauty. The beauty of seeing for this time the wholeness of life, which does not end, or even begin, but ever is present in beauty.

Cheryl L. Sanders, Ph.D. is co-founder and co-director of The School of Spiritual Psychology. She writes, teaches, organizes and generally shepherds the work of the School in all of its manifestations in the world. She has published in the areas of book introductions, book chapters, magazine articles and monographs on Spiritual Psychology in the past ten years, and has recently completed her doctoral dissertation on the spiritual psychology of the twelve senses.