You don’t have to walk on your knees no more
I now practice writing letters to myself from Love everyday.* In today’s letter, Love guided me to write a letter to my younger self who always felt the need to repent under her breathe—like a gazillion times a day—and for what? I was waking up, making my bed, reading my Bible, all while praying my repentance prayers, of course, and quietly going to elementary school, while the anxiety in my body kept me in perpetual tension. Anxious little Prisy didn’t have much guidance as to what to do with her great feelings of anxiety, so she sank deep into this internalized notion that she was a sinner that wasn’t yet too pure enough in her motivations to be a Child of God. I remember my rigid obsession with this belief that I knew I did and believed the things that were right, but I felt jittery every day for many days and seasons at a time, dreading with fear that it was impossible to know if God was pleased with me.
Today I read and reread Mary Oliver’s glorious poem Wild Geese and Mary’s lovely choice of words led me to write a song to the little Prisy who lived through several seasons of feeling guilt for existing. Here’s a part of the lyrics I wrote and then sang to her this morning:
There you kneeled, little Prisy—eager to touch the right hand of the father
You were just a little girl and all you knew to do to save yourself was to pray
you were so scared, little prisy,
Sitting here two decades and some change after,
I revisit you, nine year old beautiful little prisy with your innocence and traumatized little body
I revisit you my prisy and I hold your hand in mine
As I testify to you that Love is Right here by your side…
That mother Oliver has paved the way saying,
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk in your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
You do not need to hold your hands up in forced ritual til they’re numb.
and you do not have to understand why the world feels so scary the way it does.
You do not need to whisper prayers of forget to say “god”…
Just
LOVE
What
You
LOVE
And start by holding on to me, my little one,
For you are only just my little girl, and I am
Always, always, always
By your side…
You don’t have to tread through mountains,
Hear your fear, she is asking for some water;
And it is time to let her know
That she can come
collapse safely on my shoulders
She can come,
I’ll hug her calmly
with deep fervor
And I’ll remind her
She doesn’t have to walk on her knees no more
She don’t have to walk on her knees no more
this practice was introduced to me through Liz Gilbert who has a community on Substack called Letters from Love.
