Sacred Water Vessel
In last month’s email I mentioned buying my first vinyl record. The blessed record I bought was Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future and we’ve spun it an absurd amount of times. Her lyrics are simple and felt, all the while being transcendent. What makes this vinyl especially cool is that it was made from recycled materials. Further, all the performances were recorded live and mastered directly to vinyl. No computer had any part in its beautiful outcome! Adrianne creates with such intentionality and that’s been inspiring me as I look forward to creating a new Real Face album this year.
Suffice to say, Adrianne is my musical spirit guide right now. A month or so back I was watching one of her interviews, and in it she was drinking water from a large mason jar. Naturally, I went to the cabinet and found the largest vessel I could see and started gulping water from it. I kept hearing that glass is the best to eat and drink from so I was ready to let go of my iconic Nalgene.
One of the clumsy bits about my new vessel was its inability to fit into the Prius cup holder. Still, I would let it loosely sit in the cup holder, tilting and sloshing around, on the verge of soaking my car's interior. I honestly didn’t think about a better way to transport it until it dumped out. After a couple more occurrences of it soaking the car and almost breaking, an epiphany came about: I need to protect my sacred vessel. I often can be quite reckless in the way I go about treating my things, so this felt like a wonderful opportunity to not just use this vessel, but to care for it also.
The sacred vessel was not safe for much longer. A day or two after making my vow, I took it out from the dishwasher and poured some water in my beloved vessel. It cracked immediately, due to the heat of the glass and the coolness of the water. Shards fell to the floor and my heart sank. Lillian was in the room and her’s did too, probably because she’s quite empathetic. Though I wanted to be the metaphorical mother to that sacred vessel, I had failed and our time had ended much too soon. Eventually, I decided I would forgive myself and choose a new sacred vessel from the cabinet.
The sacred vessel and I are not all that different. Both of us are sacred and fragile; with bodies that have the ability to carry water, but have been shattered. My shattering has looked like the experience of chronic pain that has become increasingly more frustrating to manage. I know many of you can relate. What used to be fixed with a run and a book is now requiring doctors and limitations. I’m not sure if things will ever feel better at this point but I still try to care about my health everyday. It’s easy to feel bitter when it’s hard to just be around. To feel like I can’t hold water. To feel like any significant work I put forth yields small change or more often, nothing at all. But still I only have one real option: I need to protect my sacred vessel.
What makes me and the sacred vessel different is that I cannot just throw away my body and grab a new one. I have to work with this one and learn to be thankful for it. I have to keep going to the doctor’s office. Keep waking up early to stretch and pray. While I don’t know why I experience pain, I do know I always have the opportunity to be a good friend to Lillian and a present dad to Basil. I have work to do and a person to be. I was and will be shattered from a lot of things in life, but I’d still like to hold some water all the same. I want to be a sacred vessel.
I’d like to close with a benediction from a Cassandra Jenkins song we’ve been enjoying…
Baby, go get in the ocean
If you're bruised or scraped or any kind of broken
The water, it cures everything.”
Blessings,
Andrew
