Dead Head - Part 1
The sheer curtains part, revealing more than ash, more than bone, more than sand, more than earth.
Idyllic settings, peaceful, green, and quiet, tempt me with their lushness and deserted lanes, but I’ve never had the inclination to run through a cemetery.
Here in the middle of the Mojave desert, in the middle of the St Andrew’s Abbey grounds, at the top of a hill, is a cemetery reserved for the Benedictine abbey monks and oblates. This is not a green paradise for the dead. Terracotta sand, gravel and rocks speak dry, not lush. Sentinels of Joshua trees guard the rows of stone crosses and grave markers. Wild sage, rosemary, and buckwheat sway in the barren wind.
I’ve found the thinnest of thin places, where dimensional lines fade. Life, death, past, present meld together in a spiritual blur. Time marks presence in the moment. The cemetery holds my hand, escorting me to the front seat of my soul play in progress.
I sit on a bench at the west end slowing my thoughts, matching the motionless postcard speed of the scene. When all thought halts, when the inner voice fades to nothing, it’s time to listen.
The dead speak to me.
No, this is not a real life version of The Sixth Sense. I don’t see dead people.
I only hear them.
The thinness of the sand, the thinness of the very soil, the thinness of every marked grave becomes thin as silk. I’ll stroll the rows, pausing at each site, noting dates and names. Sandstone and granite cairns strike a balanced pose on the verticals and horizontals of the crosses. The breeze speaks indiscernibles.
Left Brain says,
“It’s only the wind”
Right Brain says,
“Listen.”
I breathe in the calmness of the moment. Closing my eyes to this world, I close my preconceptions, close my non negotiables. If I clench my fists, I anchor myself in the now. But if my palms are open, facing upward, I can embrace anything that comes. The sheer curtains part, revealing more than ash, more than bone, more than sand, more than earth.
A soul steps from reality to reality, from finite to infinite. Thinness removes the barrier between the two. The dead are here and far removed. They are dead, in my reality, in my time, but not dead in the infinity of their reality. In the thinness of the thinnest place, I can reach through the veil, beyond the sand, beyond the stone, beyond the seen into the unseen.
I am grounded by words. Words give me structure, depth, context, and shape. But words give me no clue about the unseen. Words are empty, lost in the thinness of this place. Words have no meaning here, no power, no certainty.
So, I open my eyes to the backdrop mountains, jutting red, amber, metallic tones of dark silver and black. Stone structures thrusting upward are solid, solid as anything else called reality. The treeline, defining sky and not sky with angled green, silhouettes the landscape. I gaze upward, finding the sun, searching for the bluest blue. Drawing my view back I take it all in.
Sun, sky, mountains, valley, desert and cemetery say, “This is who I am. This is my reality.”
Because I am a contemplative, I have a genie’s wish supply of “Why?”
Why am I drawn to a cemetery in the middle of the desert?
Why do I find it comfortable, familiar, welcoming?
Why do I sense community in the middle of unknown gravesites?
Why do I feel peace, life, love?
Take me deeper into the thinness.
My wife
, who also serves as my editor asked me if I was familiar with the Sara Groves song,This Peace. I had never heard this song before and she suggested I link it here with my article. I don’t know the backstory to this song but it goes well with the reading. Enjoy and thanks for reading.
Hi Steve, cemeteries certainly are thin spaces. I used to take my kids to the cemetery to play when they were little. I had two toddlers and a baby and then three toddlers, and playgrounds were just too scary. They all went different directions, and I couldn’t keep track of them. So they played around the graves and climbed on the headstones instead. And it was quiet, something their mom really needed. Although having said that, I’m going to contradict myself and say that cemeteries are also full of voices and lives. May your listening be fruitful.
Steve, this is such a lovely piece. The photos are gorgeous. Mojave is one of my most favorite places. I love to run there . And this,
Left Brain says,
“It’s only the wind”
Right Brain says,
“Listen.”
I love that I read this today, of all days, as I took myself for a long walk on my favorite trail here and my soul purpose (soul's purpose?) was to listen. I wanted to have a conversation with God/Spirit/Universe but mostly I wanted to listen.
What I heard was to stop judging, to stop worrying. I thought about thin places and how sometimes it seems as if the veil is gauzy-thin and we could just step through to somewhere else.