This past weekend some friends and I went to see Memoirs of a Geisha. The most disturbing message out of the movie is “a Geisha has no right to desire”. Being bought as a child and sold into a life you did not choose also came with the instruction to shut down your heart. Nitta Sayuri, along with her sister, is sold by her father because of their poverty – sold into a life none of them knew anything about.
Dangerous Beauty also a powerful movie that speaks of a woman whose only choice, in order to find life, is to be a courtesan. She embraces beauty in a place which should shut down her heart but instead she refuses to do so. Veronica cannot let her heart be shut down, even if she must stand alone, she will fight to let her heart live magnificently.
Nitta Sayuri, through abuse and training, learns that she must never dream or hope. Slavery to the prison that is her life is all she can exist in.
Perhaps the reason this message from Memoirs of a Geisha hit me so powerfully is because in the last number of weeks I have been camping out in the place of lost hope, lost dreams, disappointment. It is the campsite where the unfulfilled pieces of the heart and soul are scattered about in places that are meant for LIFE, for hope, for living with passion. This campsite holds little to no light, there is little wind of the Spirit – a least that my heart can feel. Camping out in this place of darkness, closed heart, and despair, is so contrary to where my passion for life lives – yet somehow it becomes my squatter’s camp when my heart seems unable to find the Light. Why do I let old voices have such power over the truth?
Hearing the words “I believe in you” brought my heart back out into the Light again, like coming out of the woods onto white sand of a gloriously sunny beach. The death or attempted death of desire is often self inflicted, triggered by words that echo the past.
My heart is set on pilgrimage – set to choose healing and wholeness and I believe in the truth that my heart is set on pilgrimage, that the Almighty will walk this journey with me. Could it be They were camping out with me holding those words “I believe in you”? Could it be They were waiting until my soul was willing to once again embrace the truth of “my heart is set on pilgrimage” and seek the Light?
I want the courage of Veronica who refused to let her heart and soul die to desire, to living passionately. The tears hiding behind my eyes are like the grains of sand on the seashore – too many to be counted. They will fall when they can but I realize today that I no longer want to stay in this place of shutting down my heart – I want the freedom of the open sky and endless horizon where the Spirit whispers that to desire in the place that also holds disappointment is to live in the sacred space that holds my brokenness and my healing.