clarity: freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.  the quality of coherence.

I encountered clarity on my living room floor, once.  I found myself hemorrhaging from the inside out.  There should have been a pool of blood right next to me, but there wasn’t.  My body should have been covered in bruises from the battle I was fighting, but there were none.  Every aching part of me was disassembled. Yet a mirror would have reflected back to me limbs still attached.  My heart, though annihilated, was still beating.  My lungs were still filtering air and my cells, from what I could tell, were doing the best they could to convert lack into some kind of energy.  The words “I don’t love you” knock a person out cold.  Not because I didn’t know.  It suddenly made sense, all those years of building a bridge that never reached the other side.  In a single moment, the world became a foreign wasteland of a place.  There was not going to be new life springing up from this ground.  In order for anything to stay alive it must be fed.  This particular life had been starved.  Clarity hits like a fist lodged deep in between your floating ribs, in the place most vulnerable.  The gut.  It was on my living room floor, in the mess of my own rebirth where I sharply understood this: it was going to be all fight and prayer and courage from here.

confusion: the state of being bewildered or unclear in one’s mind about something.  lack of understanding.

Doubt and uncertainty are a little less sharp.  Dull and subtle to a point of going ignored.  There are so many layers to dig through within each person, every experience and all the different kinds of believing.  My mind gets information from all angles of questioning.   I will never understand why certain decisions were made.  Even more perplexing is the ease of getting lost in the how.  How did it unfold this way?  How are we able to live with and move through the alterations of existence?  How do I even begin to DO this?  Even when I feel certain about something, I am keenly aware that there is another way to see it.  There is a different perspective that perhaps could expand the picture.  This can sometimes leave me idle, all that mystification.  Confusion feels like a life raft some days.  Round.  Easy.  Unending.  It’s both the question and the possibility.  I can get lost in all the unknowing.

The intersection is where I uncover the fullest experience.  It is usually in prayer.  This is where I come, confused and alone.  Overwhelmed, insufficient and without.  This is where I lay it down.  This is where I receive.  A moment of intention.  An honest breath.  Whispered words or silent space.  I imagine my older crone self nodding at the confusion with the deep knowing held in her experienced eyes.  This is where I meet the residing wisdom in my gut, when the questions are hushed.  It is the constant stream that makes it’s way under all the noise.  It is that inkling which keeps rising up, softly demanding to be heard.  It is the gentle affirmation saying, “you know the way.”  Here I rest.  In the space where clarity cradles confusion.

To learn more about The Holy Contradiction project, please read our posts here and here.

Each shot in this post was a collaboration. Images of me were taken by the dynamic Georgia, while images of her were taken by me.  I did all edits you see here on the photos within this post.  To see Georgia’s interpretation of our session please visit her here.