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The Kindly Light of Myth in Circling Glue

Leigh Thou Me on The Nightest Dark And I Am Far From Home

Hi there, it's Margie. As mentioned on the Mormon Transitions Podcast last week, we have decided to have a new podcast

and I decided to have me share an essay that I wrote, an essay that came to being actually when John came to me and just said, hey would you mind compiling some of your thoughts about our last five years or so or what your life has looked like for the past five years or so.

And I did. And those thoughts and musings became an essay called Broken Open, which I will be reading to you today.

And just like at the retreat, I normally start with a visual which is a painting by my daughter, my oldest daughter Audrey.

This is what it looks like.

Okay. Broken Open.

I tend to cry.

A warning of sorts.

Louise Erdrich wrote in The Pain to Drum,

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that and living alone won't either. For solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken or betrayed or left or hurt or death brushes near.

Let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps.

Wasting their sweetness.

...