INEXORABLE JOY
Sometimes, you just need a Baby Goat to fill the Hole in your Soul
What do you want for Christmas?
Be honest - say the thing in your heart.
If what you want comes from a bag, then congratulations! That joy is an real-world indicator of a real desire; a chocolate orange or a necklace is a reflection of your Life as it as now - and a giddy excitement over a brand new dishwasher is as noble a sparkle as any other…
and if your eyes are welling with tears because you wish to God it was as simple as that, then congratulations -
you lived long enough to develop a Hole in your Soul.
That hole is shaped like an open space; a chair where someone else once sat, an empty crib, a pair of shoes still sitting in the corner, or the door that never opened. It’s an echo of a dream, a prayer that was never answered. Our arms are so tightly wrapped around that present we never received, we can scarely breathe…
and when someone asks “What do you want for Christmas?” it feels like a stab in the heart.
What did I want?
I wanted you
The Wound That Never Heals can leave a mighty void in our universe, a black hole of yearning that swallows the sun. The hunger never goes away, the emptiness is never filled. So we make a mask of smiles, or self medicate, or drown it in tears, but we keep thinking if we keep trying, we can let go;
But it’s time to stop pretending and embrace the pain.
Some dreams are worth holding, even if they never come true. That longing is baked into our Humanity, the longing for family and children and friends, the aspirations of creativity and hope dangling like a Ornament, just out of reach on a Christmas tree…
to deny that pain is to deny our own Humanity. It is who we are; we long for what we do not have and at the same time, we reject the pain when we cannot fulfill that longing. The double-edged sword cuts both ways. How do we hold on to something that consumes us? The answer is more simple than I thought…
feed something else.
Now, I am not one to tell you that feeding the world makes our pain goes away. That’s a lie, and it’s also an unrealistic goal. But I can categorically witness that feeding a Baby Goat is a number one way to ease the anguish of the world. Why?
Cute
Adorable
Awww
Now, you may say to yourself, “I do not have a Baby Goat”, and this might be true - but you do have you. Use your amazing powers of perception to look around…
it’s there, the Baby Goat of your soul, the Inexorable Joy. It probably doesn’t look like a Baby Goat, though, because it is disguised; it looks like an elderly neighbor, or a potted plant that is wilting, or a mangy cat in the alley. You must seek it with your whole heart…
then you must feed it what it wants.
It may want a bottle, but more than likely it just want a kind word, or a person to listen to them talk about trains. It might even want a text saying howdy, or a scratch behind the ears. One never knows, until one find that Joy. I am witness to the extraordinary power of kindness to heal our own hearts. Those who have holes in their souls recognise the emptiness in others…
go fill it.
Now here’s the tricky part. YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT WHAT THEY ASKED FOR. Their arms are wrapped tight around an empty space in their own soul, shaped like an unborn child, or that girl from math class, or a hay bale-
or in this case, a Mama Goat.
I am not a Mama Goat. I am not shaped like the hole in that Baby Goat’s soul; he wasn’t looking for me when he found me - or did I find him?- when God led him to cry at my door. He was looking for his Mama.
I am not his Mama, but I am me, and I can hold a bottle.
Tonight, that Baby Goat is still going to cry for its Mama, and that Mama Goat won’t be there because she’s out in the back pasture and she has forgotten her own child…
even as one of you is weeping now, for your own mother-
and I have never forgotten you, the Hole in my Soul, the longing of my lifetime; you are imprinted upon my being, the immeasurable sorrow of my Humanity
but after crying, this Baby Goat will go to sleep with a full belly; and it may dream of its Mother, and her warm fur. But then he will wake up in my arms, and want another bottle, for we have found each other. The Holes in our Souls are only filled with that Christmas Present for which we never asked, the Prayer for which we never prayed, the Life we never knew we wanted…
the inexorable Joy of unexpected Miracles, made real in Love.