Sybil Comes Clean
It’s been a rough week. I haven’t posted because I have been in darkness. But, as always, darkness has it’s uses in pointing out the Light.
For the past 10 years or so since my face has really started change, I have hidden. I don’t post pictures of myself and I have avoided seeing people from my past. I’ve been trying to control something that is uncontrollable and it’s exhausting.
So, I’ve decided it’s time to show myself. My body is not what I hoped for, but I can’t hide for the rest of my life. I have to accept what I am. Next week Abby of the Arts is publishing an interview with me and a photo will be published. It’s funny that I have shared many intimate spiritual experiences here but this is what gives me pause. I don’t mean to be narcissistic, I am grateful for you bearing with me on this one! It’s a big deal for me to share this, deep breath…
Here is a picture of me in Paris at Notre Dame before I became ill in 1987:
Here is a picture of me now. Not a great picture, but I took it myself with a timer:
Here is my right hand fully extended:
That’s me, but only part of me. Maybe now I will be freer. Thank you for indulging me and being here to share this with.
Onto the next challenge…
The Cracked Vessel
Here I am
lost
empty
unhingedSo hollow
that any knock
reverberates
a gong in my ancient earOverpowering sound of the world
you demand entrance
but your demands are
slowly fracturing meA fragile vessel
worn by time
cracked
sundered
decayedFill me
oh fill me up with Your Light
so that at least
from my fractured self
some honeyed Light maydrip
from me
to you.
Update:Comments enabled. Sorry! I don’t know how I keep shutting them off!
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Monday, April 13th, 2009,
by Painter of Blue and is filed under "Poetry, Spiritual Path, fear, fear, Poetry, Spiritual Path ".
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14 Responses “Sybil Comes Clean”
Sybil, you are a brave (and very talented) women. A friend who is going through dark periods of anxiety painted me a picture of a cracked pot with this caption: “A flower blooms in our brokenness.” I had told her a tale I’d once read–about how our lives are liked a cracked vase that has been put back together with shining gold and silver. And so your poem reminds me of that and is beautiful.
Thank you for emailing me, for visiting my blog, and for being you.
Sybil, I have something to say to you about this. I have hesitated to post it. I was afraid to speak my heart. Afraid of being taken wrong, afraid of sounding insincere, afraid of saying the wrong thing, afraid of hurting you somehow with some ill-chosen word.
Yet, I carry the paint-stained cloth of the St. Gabriel’s Guild. Do you remember the day that it passed from your hand to mine? Your precious hand; when I look at the photo of it, I see only the beauty that it has created over the years, the joy it has provided to so many upon seeing its works. If that hand never creates another thing, I would still cut off both of mine to have just one like it in return.
I still remember that day, and I treasure both the memory and the cloth to this day. So must I take my inspiration from you, both on the field of honor and away from it. I will try to match your bravery; try to live up to the favor I carry. I will speak from my heart.
Sybil, you are a creature of excruciating beauty. Yours is a beauty that transcends the base physicality of our world. It is so much more than that, so much more lasting. Your Smile, the light in your eyes, your bravery, your creative drive, your kindness, your wonderful sense of humor, these are all a part of it.
There where times it was almost overwhelming for me to be near you. To be in your presence is to look into another, finer world than our own. It is akin to seeing a wild deer in the forest, or feeling a terrible storm on my face. It is a realization that you are witnessing something beyond the normal range of experience.
Sybil, you were made for a better world than this one. We are all so very lucky that you chanced to fall into ours.
Agape, Bran
I admire your strength, and your beauty.
And the bigness of your spirit, which is both in and beyond your body, shines through this post. That inspires me.
Thank you for being you.
i appreciate and applaud your bravery in transparency. i think those things which we are most afraid of are bigger than the actual act of sharing….sharing helps remove the charge …
i appreciate you. your art, your support, your you-ness. thanks for being part of my community of artists and friends.
~sueokieffe
I am deeply moved by this courage. When I was severely ill with anorexia a friend wrote to me that there is a Japanese tradition that all broken plates be mended with gold. The more broken, the more gold.
There isn’t much I can add except that my heart goes out to you and it is always wonderful to meet somebody prepared to be themselves in such a world as this. That’s real beauty.
You are an inspiration! Just wanted to add my love and support and applaud you for your courage to be open. I agree with Fabeku, your spirit shines though beautifully!
You are beautiful inside and out and very brave my lovely friend. I admire you for your strength and your beauty. And I love the post by Joely about the golden parts of the mended plates. What a beautiful way to look at life and honor those broken pieces. Perhaps you will inspire me to share a picture of myself(which I have never been very brave about). Blessings !
You have the loveliness of a beech tree in spring–tall, smooth and strong, despite the scribbles and scars terrible hands have carved in your skin. Your tallness is the height of your vision, which allows you to see so much in so many places, and create art that helps others see afar as well. Your smoothness is your humor and good sense, that allow you to focus beyond the immediate problems that bog so many down. Your strength in turning mountains into molehills, day after day after day, inspire those of us who turn every molehill into a mountain.
Your blog post was so moving. I think you are tremendously brave to show the world what you have been going through, and to let sunlight reach a part of you that is in pain.
I hope that what I am about to say comes out in the way I intend. Please know that I am speaking the truth. When I first saw you, I was shocked by your transformation. James, who had never met you before, was however not aware that there was anything different about you, outside of the range of the normal. Yes, scleroderma has dramatically changed your appearance, but no, you are not a ‘freak.’ Your hands of course don’t look ‘normal’, but the important thing about hands is what they can do, not how they look, and yours can do amazing things.
I know that all of this is very easy for me to say from where I sit now, but I do know a bit about it: when I was a teenager I was extremely skinny and had scoliosis, so I looked freakish. People stared at me and I was afraid to leave the house. My aunt told me that it embarrassed her to go outside with me. Someone in the subway once said that he didn’t know what I was, and his friend said that he just knew I wasn’t human. Naturally these things completely mortified me and I have never forgotten them. I found that if I imagined myself completely naked and exposed , it gave me more confidence, oddly, so that is what I did to cope. I think that you look within the bounds of normal, and that is something to be grateful for.
Please know that I love you and admire you.
girl, you are so brave in showing yourself so openly and so beautifully. although what we see in those pictures is part of what you are in this present experience in this world, it’s not really the truth about yourself. it’s only a vessel. since I don’t know you in person, I see part of your truth through your work, and what I see is just captivating. and when the spirit shines that way, all the rest loses its importance.
than you for being such an inspiration and for opening doors for others that might feel the same way. all my respect and love to you.
Sybil
I have often wondered about this process of “outing”. The term was made a thing by the gay rights lobby, and took on some fascist overtones … Outing was done to someone.
But the power in this is our willing submission to our isness, being who we are. I know that I have failed, on a grand scale, and I have said to the cosmos, “I, failure.”
Someone said something like “I thought life was about preparing how to live, now I see that it’s about preparing how to die.” At first I thought, that’s pessimistic, but I’ve come to agree with it. Because death is not simply about loss, but rather its opposite, about coming to life. The deaths you are going through – to your dreams, hopes, all this egocide, must be excruciating.
I think Paul is wonderful here, “Not that I might live but that Christ might live in me.” Reality is a kind of inversion of our western materialism.
Sybil, from Cape Town, my heart is with you. Please come and visit us – I believe you know my fellow traveller and painter Andrew (fakeexpressionoftheunknown).
I’d like to share a piece of prose with I wrote 2 years back: http://soundandsilence.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/you-told-me-your-name/
Twitter: LyndaLehmann
says:
Sybil,
It is indeed amazing to discover that you have been coping with an illness such as this. Your spirit and creative energy are the things that come through when one visits your blog, and the times I’ve been here, I have not picked up on the slightest self-indulgence.
My heart goes out to you for your suffering, but your beauty is far larger than the changes to your physical self–as the above comments from people who may know you far better than I, attest.
The world is cruel, has always been so. It’s unfair that often, those who most need our support and affirmation don’t get it– either because we don’t choose to give it, or because their infirmities are guarded or hidden from us.
I give you my love, the love of one full person to another (in spite of our wounds) for your undiminished spirit. You have great courage to make this disclosure on your blog, even to us relative strangers.
If there were anything I could say to take away some of your pain and anxiety, I would say it. But I don’t know of that thing. SO I will just say “BRAVO.” Bravo to you for being you: a courageous and creative soul.
Hugs ((((((((((((((( ))))))))))))))
Hi Sybil –
Wonder do you know the incredible love and truth and beauty that emanates from you? through all of how you are being, how you are feeling, and what you’re creating here.
Thank you so much for sharing, in all these incredibly heart- and soul-driven creative ways of yours through your site; and in doing so, for playing a giant spirit part in re-uniting us all
Yes, we’re all creating and responding to this dream, right? so thanku thanku for reminding my heart to sing: yes! let’s keep shining our light on every part and piece of us til we really really feel and remember and see and rejoice how we’re all one whole forever heart light inside it all.
You are deeply deeply beautiful and i send you loads of love. from Emer
Thank you Sybil. Bless you. I visited your blog once before, but this post…well…now you’ve got me. And I am simply not going to be able to say what I think and feel about it. My hands are not up to it.
I offer instead this from Peggy Rosenthal’s blog at Image (http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/chatting-with-debbie-blue):
“Living with illness that stabs at my psyche as much as at my flesh, I’ve been clinging these days to the words of Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche communities for people with developmental disabilities, as quoted by Stanley Hauerwas in The Christian Century (12/8/08). Woundedness is ‘inherent in the human condition,’ says Vanier, and ‘what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit, in a mysterious way, is living at the center of the wound.’”
Also, I wonder if you have read “Autobiography of a Face” by Lucy Grealy. I will not be surprised if you have, and I would be interested to read what you think of it. I don’t think she had a conscious mystical way like you, but it is a beautiful book.
And thank you for your recent link to my blog. Knowing that you are reading it gives me a little courage boost, as I have a lot of trepidation about posting my more openly theological writing.