In My End: My Beginning by Margot Van Sluytman

In my end is my beginning.
T. S. Eliot

This year two colleagues of mine died. And my heart roared. Tears aplenty accompanied me. Poet that I am. Word-lover. Image-seeker. Meaning-making-hound-dog. Doggedly seeking a place to plant myself so that the ache of these losses within the crucible in which I find myself grounded, honed, chiselled, challenged, challenging, writing, wording, rewording, sculpting relationship with my students, who are too my teachers, is soothed. By tiny shards. Soothed. And death finds home everywhere. In each nook. Cranny. Crevice. Concreted crenellation or grassy llano, there she be.

What research, I ask myself, can we do when the heart fails to cease its eking, leaking ache, and crushing sorrow? What academic skill need we birth, resurrect, divine in order to erase this over-whelming tsunami of acknowledging our finitude? Where to look? What book? What paper? What journal? To what podcast need we creep, crawl, scurry, bound, fling ourselves in order to quell brutal, blistering despair? Self-immolation cannot work, for too, too many teeming tears douse the flames.

…And yet … And yet … And yet …

The pen does not betray.

Fingers to the keyboard do not deny.

Therein lies the research.

This then is one way.

Perhaps in concert with feet to the pavement.

Eyes to the skies.

Reaching out to nature

And her unmanacled Wisdom.

For death itself. Death of colleagues.

Kin of books, research, conferences,

Symposiums, lectures, workshops,

Talks. Their deaths point a star.

Map a direction.

There. There. There. There rings out.

Resounds. Resonates. Reveals.

Sweet revelation. Abundant clarion call.

Write. Write. Write.

As memories cascade and collide. The places we shared together. The work we did together. The meetings to which we went. The activities in which we participated. The food we ate. The cups of tea and coffee drank. Music, too, speaks.

Music that was on the radio.  That was popular when we journeyed. Music that fired. That inspired our work. Our research. In those shared moments when we struggled. Creating. Inventing. Teaching. Learning. Un-learning. Re-learning. Earning. The blessing in which we found ourselves. In the context of our job. Work. Career. Vocation.

Years ago, a Sage-Wisdom-Keeper, liminal-walking nun from a spirituality centre which I was visiting, and where I was engaging in a raw-salty-spoken articulation about patriarchy, said to me, “Margot, if you want to know where Godde wants you to be, look at your feet.” That Elder’s words have lived with me since that time. And as words do, in all manner and shape of their many versions, variations, and permutations of forms, I was awoken, as if from a dreaded sleep of horror-dreaming, to the fact that wherever we are, is the “school”, the very “schooling” we need. The present of acknowledging and honouring the present. The now. Cherished, redolent, gift. Noting where our feet are place. Planted. Rest.

Because in my very beginning is my end. And in my end, my beginning. I know. I know the truth of tears. Anguish. Empty dawns. Flaccid days. Dreary dreaming. For each holds potential. Potential. Infinite potential. For the pen. And fingers to the keyboard bellow. Beseech. Remind. Ever so gently. That gratitude. Grace. Great globs of gaping sorrow at the loss of kindred colleagues, is but a call from the liminal. A call begging a response. A fresh. Freeing response. To claim the very act. The life-giving fact. That our story. The story that indeed forms us. Forms us as we wake daily aware of the life’s fragility. And fulminating glory. Is a benediction. An ebullient. Bursting benediction. And upon our knees. Eyes lowered in prayer. Eyes raised to sun. Stars. Sweetly swelling sky. Golden glowing moon. We witness truth. Trust. And the mystery that puts us in the same place. At the same time. Sculpting meaning. As we ourselves continue to be sculpted. Continue to be. Alive. Alive. Alive. For in our beginning is our end. And in our very end: our very beginning.

Shared Journey
Within every lightning bolt
Of harrowing ache and
Piercing grief, hope lives
An invitation from love
To trust each tumbling
Tear. Our end in each
Beginning. Our beginning
In each and every end.
© Margot Van Sluytman