Let Your Heart Be Broken

Last night Rafael Bejarano played didgeridoo and did a sound healing ceremony for a group gathered at the Positive Living Center.  Surrounded by dozens of flutes, didgeridoos and other instruments, Rafael often looked like a one-man shamanic band.  Some of the didgs he played were huge, decorated, iconic instruments and the music was at once primal and stirring.  He circled the room blowing the sound vibrations and scent of sage into the heart of each attendee.  It was not just listening to a musician perform, it was a whole-body, vibratory experience.

Between songs, Bejarano talked about love:  being love, loving others, loving every aspect of our selves, even the imperfections.  At one point he played a three-chambered clay pipe that he had made himself and told the story of the first time he broke it.  Devastated at its loss, he gathered the pieces and later glued them back together and found that the sound it made was even more beautiful.  Later, at a Japanese tea ceremony, he was told that if a tea master broke a tea cup, he would glue it back together with gold so that the broken cup would be even more valuable than the original one.

I was so taken with that image that I wrote the following poem:

  

Fall in love.

Let your heart be broken.

Fall in love.

Let your heart be broken a thousand times.

Fall in love.

Let your heart be broken so often that it becomes pure gold.

Fall in love.

Let your heart be broken so often

that a river of gold pours from it.

Fall in love.

Here's a short experience of Bejarano: