Little Soul's Soul

Little Soul's spirituality is practiced in ritual. Her experiences of God come through the truest, most desperate sacraments. Every feeding is to quench an impossible thirst, every gaze at leaves is a direct praise of the creator, every return of mother is the welcoming smile worthy of the prodigal, every tear is an acknowledgment that something is very undone in this world. She practices these sacraments every day, in full humanity and eternal present-ness. When she lives she can be nothing but love and death and reconciliation and ultimately resurrection. Her most powerful sacrament is her following Christ's commandment to join him in his death and resurrection, which she practices through sleep. To Little Soul, the feeling of tiredness brings the absolute fear of death, the knowledge of the encroaching emptiness and nothing. When her eyes start to droop she both knows that death through sleep is coming and also fights with everything she is to stay alive. She screams, jerks, and tries to throw herself out of my arms, often when her eyes are already half shut. Other times sleep seems to surprise her before she is ready and surrenders before she can even put her hands up, but make no mistake, she still is not happy about it. The kenosis, the self-emptying, does not come easily, because it cannot come from the surface with half-acknowledgements or self aware introspection and false humility. True Self-emptying comes from living in the truth of death and only that true, the presence that what we know and experience and are now has to end. The knowledge of our old life being replaced by a new one, the awareness of Resurrection is never a temptation of not living into the experience of death because she truly does not remember that she will wake. When she screams and grunts and fears sleep, there is nothing I can do to comfort her, because this is her sacrament, this is her joining with Christ, and I can't join her there in her alone-ness, I can only watch as my Little Soul's tears turn to rhythmic engine noises, a noise that seems to come from her belly, and the signal that even though she is surrendering herself to sleep, she isn't going out without a fight. She wants me to know she has lost, but she is still present. Little Soul's daily defeat to sleep prepares her for her ultimate defeat to death. Every night sleep is unity with the Crucifixion and preparation for the resurrection.