Heart Song No. 1: I Loved You Once

What is a Heart Song?

Allowing for something to be created from the practice of listening to the heart center. Starting in stillness, with quiet, relaxed concentration in the heart, then allowing inspiration to strike and acting upon that without questioning.

The name was inspired by young Mattie Stepanek and his collection of HeartSongs— absolutely sweet and silly and touching poems from his big little heart.

The practice of creating quietly from the heart space I learned from my first spiritual teacher, John.

I’m about to produce my fifth Creator Being Podcast and it’s all about Open Heart Health. I’m going through a big transition in my life, and a heart song came to me.

As adults, many of our heart songs contain grief, deep longings, reflections, and releases. This is definitely one of those for me, with all the shades and colors (not exactly the pictures with butterflies/rainbows/ dinosaurs you’d love seeing from my elementary students.)

But it’s definitely a wide open expression of my heart, and that, is worth sharing.

Love,

Ash

I Loved You Once

You filled all of me with a hope I had never known.

God spoke to me, “he’ll teach you how to love.”

I wept with gratitude for my opportunity.

I leapt fully into your arms, a complete unknown.

For the first time, I did not revolt at my own nakedness.

Suspended moments of no separation, only loving expansion in all I could feel.

I laid on my knees at your feet. Ready to meet you, honor you, wherever you took me.

Sooner than I could barely fathom, separateness slapped, followed by a droning ache in the lonely void where I constantly wanted to meet you.

You weren’t there.

Where in the hell did you go?

I fought the dismay, the disbelief, the fractured hope, a thousand or so times.

I stubbornly became determined to revel in this void.

I stayed there waiting, forever the loyal solider, for the return of his dashing captain.

You made me your enemy instead, when I wasn’t losing the battle as your lover.

Your heart and mind twisted, that to untangle the knots upon knots left my hands upon hands tired and sore.

But my hands were strong, and my heart was strong, so I kept trying.

You loved me for trying. Oh shit.

You shared your secret of wanting to be saved, leaving me heartsunk yet stubbornly beholden.

Then all out war.

You utterly left me, denied me, forsake me.

Devastation. Repair. Devastation. Repair.

And how wonderful the moments of joy, peace, and play between us quietly underscored by the sun expecting the clouds.

We accepted the foggy dizziness of circling the drain.

But moments of clarity. Of movement. Within myself.

Roots may be deep, but an axe grinding into a trunk will surely make the tree fall.

Small blows. Big blows. They all left a mark.

The axe kept swinging, but daringly I began meeting myself in the space where I met its sharpest edges.

Sometimes, like anyone, I didn’t, and I swung back.

But Lord, you know I spent so much time trying to sand down those rough gauges.

Sanding had its paradox, making me tired, yet wiser.

Forgiveness: not making you into the person my heart wanted to experience.

Healing: not identifying with all my pain, feeling its depths honorably, while still trying to keep my heart alive with giving.

Loving: meeting myself expansively, softly, quietly, in my own self-giving.

God was right, you taught me to love.

Again, I weep with gratitude at the opportunity.

I weep with feelings of wanting you to still be my one and only.

I weep at how long it took me to learn to love.

I weep at how it all unfolds from past to present to future, all at once.

I weep at how Love was always there loving, and so visibly in the darkness.

I loved you once darling, so deeply you cannot fathom, and it’s there in the story of my cells, as chapters that shaped my heart.

I loved you once, and in its purest form, a most tender devotion, echos joyfully in the cells of our children.

The love is not forgotten nor dismissed, only pages in the past as I write a new beginning and make new stories.

I loved you once, and surely for having done so, will always love you.