Dante: Divine Comedy, Paradise: Canto 33, A Prayer

In Dante’s original, this is the point where he has his direct vision of God.

In my cosmology, it would be blasphemous to talk about such a thing. And anyway, it’s not interesting unless it’s your own, relevant to you.

Most of this Canto is spent in Dante praying and praising and then realizing he is human and must return to the human world full of frailties and lacking in the deep perceptive ability he had while on this journey.

Dante’s Divine Comedy took place in another realm. That’s how he saw it.

Mine is not so distinctly constructed.

For me, the whole cycle overlaps real locations with allegory, hell exists on earth in our everyday lives and so, most assuredly, does heaven.

So for me, this Canto closes out the cycle.

When I started this piece, I was in Victoria, unemployed, uncertain about my future and frankly pretty scared. All I could think to do was to keep moving forward, to wake up and go up the mountain every day and to keep writing.

Finishing these notes, I am sitting in the river room of the loft I share with my husband. My life is full. I would not have even dared to pray or wish for all the good things that make up my daily life as it is right now — not even four years later. And now, putting it out in the world, I am seated at my desk in the rental house we have closed for the duration of the Covid pandemic. I can see the snow coming in across the hills and into the valley. We have passed through the chaos of a Trump presidency, and although my hope for the future of the country is very tender and fragile, it does exist and I trust it will grow.

Steven is working from home. I have recovered from my heart surgery, or as close to it as anyone ever does, and in a moment, I will leave my desk to go and work out, a kind of insurance policy on the longevity my cardiologist promised. I am happy, life goes on.

My mother died last year, Steven’s father did too. I suppose that makes us the older generation now. I hope that lasts a few. more decades. I love my life.

I can only assume taking this inner journey played a large part in that. I hope and I think that the more we are able to look at our own choices, understand our beliefs and our inner lives, the better we will be able to realize our highest potential in the world we walk through every day.

I hope you know, this is my story but it is also Dante’s story and it is your story too. Everybody goes through hard times. Everyone has a false love and fallen heroes and terrifying enemies that would eviscerate you in a heartbeat.

Everyone has monsters too frightening to face without fainting and we all fail.

But we also rise. It is a cliche to say so but it really is the struggling to rise again that matters. Not even the rising, it’s the willingness to struggle back to our feet that matters.

There is a song, there were many, but this is the one that comes to mind right now, this one, among others helped me through the hardest, hopeless, homeless times in my life, I can share it with you but I hope you will have your own too.

Now the canto.

A Prayer

This is your story now. It was yours from the start. The road changes us all but the road remains the same.

Make this prayer your own.

Take this place and sow the seeds of your belief. Your belonging.

Take the hand of whomever is near to you and look into their eyes. Tell them what you really want to say.

Then listen.

The day begins with coffee for some and water for others, tea or tisane or nothing at all.

The day begins. It is all yours, only yours. Yours to begin and yours to pray.

Sing your life into truth. Open your heart and sing your song to the world.

There are no saints. We are all saints.

I walked down the mountain and, as it so often does, it began to rain.

My mother was in her house and soon I would be on my way.

I would climb into an airplane and leave this place forever and as places do, it would remain with me.

Then one day, an ordinary day when there was not much to do, someone new came through my door and once again, the field was set in motion.

In a single day, I walked out my front door and into a new life.

Another story began and someday, maybe I will tell that one but for today, I pray you have stories of your own.

I pray you have places to go and adventures of your own. I pray you have extraordinary places and things that only you can understand.

And I pray you know them, seek them, see them as gates of diamond and pearl into your own heart, into the hearts of those you meet.

The only gates we ever know.