New Beginnings

I just started a weekly God Sightings study. The theme for this week is basically, New Beginnings. It fits snugly into the New Year. When I turned to the headline, it said "The start of something big..." And I was invisibly smacked on the top of the head! Big! A word I have been running into lately. Bigheartedness. That is what wants to start-or at least continue in process, as does everything which appears to be starting. A new day is really connected to all other days, a new moment to all other moments, a new year to all other years.
I had to write it down, bigheartedness. Why did it keep pestering me? I certainly didn't mind the word, but at times I minded the implication the bigheartedness is paramount- more important, better than, smallheartedness. Another place to climb the ladder toward perfection. I balk at that ladder. I do not want to climb up anything. Too much work, and I'd probably start wheezing. :) Bigheartedness reminds me of the Grinch. His heart was three times too small. He did not work to become bighearted, it happened as a natural result of expanding his awareness. Even that he did not choose. There was no striving. He opened, like a flower, in his own time. I lean toward that beginning, the new beginning which started upon our birth, the growth of ourselves. Each moment our awareness grows, we see anew, with fresh insights. I ask God for an expanding heart. A heart with opening arms, welcoming more and more. An inviting heart. A heart accepting of new moments and unexpected results. A heart waiting, longing for mystery.
In the study, there are daily Bible readings, and I thought about doing those, but you know me and the Bible. It feels like a part of me is being ripped apart if I read too much. Maybe something is trying to open, and I am holding the door closed. I don't want to open to the Bible. I don't want to let it in. When I do, the pain often becomes unbearable. Yet, during my study of the Bible over the years, I have gained wisdom, I have gained strength, and trust in God. I have tried different ways of reading the Bible- Ignation Contemplation, praying the psalms, rewriting the text to relate to me- each of these has grown me in some way. Perhaps this new year is also a new beginning for my relationship with the Bible, which technically began last year. I halted when the depression became too much. I am terrified to enter that realm again. How much internal torment can I withstand? I do know where it leads. It leads to the Void, to the emptying of self. However, when I read, it feels like someone else is tearing me from myself, while I wish to empty willingly, not forcefully. Gracefully. If the door to the Void opens full swing, I shall be sucked in and be destroyed. For those of you who don't understand the pain, it is the depths of not being good enough. It is the screams of thousands of people who weren't worth anything to God. It is my own hatred of that monster welling up inside my heart. I break because I can't fathom that evil pouring through me. Telling me it is good. One must empty completely to admit the oxymoronic and paradoxical qualities of God. Many do not. I see surface dwellers. They stop at the edge and watch me drowning in nothingness. They are blind to the Ocean of Suffering.
A new beginning may also retrieve me from this darkness. May set me free. Or, as in the recent rediscovery of the meaning of my name, I can newly appreciate the Dark, which is my natural habitat. I was named to see into the dark. To witness the experience of the Void. I can open to it, knowing it is my destiny, for it is in my name.