Antigone, sentenced to be buried alive, bound amidst the watery glow of torches, hidden, silenced, left to crumple and shrivel, thirsting for water and light, hung herself before her lover, her bridegroom, could save her. She was made voiceless first by the fate of her father, then by the tyrant, the city, her own ego, the earth and stone isolating her, and finally by her choice to take her own life.
Antigone is a living archetype; she lives as a martyr-vision of thousands of particular Antigones. They live among us, and we don't see them, because we cannot see each other's souls bare, naked, without the masks and costumes worn to create an image, an eidelon, of some ideal: whether that is an uber-tolerant totalitarianism, a rigid conservativism, a position of power, or a victimhood. We don't see our own Antigone buried inside, that stunted, deformed, voiceless part of ourselves that has forgotten the light; we cannot hear, in the world around us, a million inner voices, our real voices, buried alive; we are left as fractured selves, dealing with receding, dying echoes of the cry within the walls, dealing with the anger and the despair at the meaningless silence that finally settles when too much time has passed.
When are we so wounded? How are we to be healed?
When does a child understand that his or her true voice is deformed, unwanted, in the eyes of those whose care it is to find, encourage, love, that voice? Where does good socialization end and enforced, silencing conformity begin? When are parents shaping an eidelon, an idol of their child, and when are we educating, or leading our child into a place of light, of truth: the truth of a God who has made him or her in His image, and is the true Father, true Teacher? When are we burying our children alive, and when are we providing space for them to speak and then, finally, sing, unashamed by the nakedness of their soul before others, before God?
When do we make those voices sing, like parrots, in our own voices?
For we are all born, like Antigone, out of, and into, deformity, our inheritance from our own Father and Mother; we are all brought into families struggling with deformity and deep flaws amidst flashes of love and light. Yes, to mature, we must negotiate our identity within our human community else we become egoists and narcissists. A true voice develops in negotiation with the Good, with God, with the flaws and beauties of ourselves and others; educare,"to lead out," means that we are given the tools and paradigms in which to freely, honestly negotiate; however, too often those in authority over us do not negotiate but rather demand, or ignore, or suppress. Many parents wish the best, and yet struggle themselves with voicelessness, with uncertainty, with deep fear in the face of a young soul so fragile and sensitive, so easily wounded, so beautiful in its intricate design, meant to be a fountain of light, an unrepeatable pattern of colors yet unseen.
The Father gave me a vision of you, young man, young woman, young Antigone, with your fragile ideals grown in the light fields of heaven, ideals that must, so often, be crushed before they can survive in this earth-encrusted world. Yet when I prayed to be a healer for you, young Antigone, I never guessed it would be out of a vision of the imperishable light within you, a vision of such beauty and power that all I can do is to use my voice, the voice I am finding again all the time, to lead you again to yourself, to love yourself, to unlock the stone and earth prison from the inside.
I see, Antigone, your Bridegroom ever watching you; He watches you, and waits, as you make your choices in the heavy nights to keep speaking in the face of contempt and ignorance or to begin to bury your true voice and craft another, one that you believe will be heard. I watch with Him, Antigone, as you are repeatedly condemned, corrupted, encrusted in the expectations of others, of teachers and would-be gurus, all those you looked to to lead you out; I close my eyes as you lock out the Bridegroom and begin preparation to hang your own voice, yourself.
The Bridegroom shows me His own vision of you and asks me to listen for the last vestiges of that voice, crying in the depths, under all your practiced tones of competency and complacency, that crying that your anger and despair and self-hatred are all pointing to; I listen, and sometimes I see the crushed counterpart, within you, to the vision He gives me. I find the pieces of that vision in your pain, and I try to use poetry, identity of ratio, analogy, challenge, but mostly the settling into my heart before you, the nakedness of my own past burial.
I tell you that I was also Antigone, that I buried myself alive in order to survive, that I built the prison and accepted my deformity as deserved, as identity. I condemned myself in my ignorance and ego. Then I tell you of the moment in the garden, when I, an old soul, a scarred soul, heard the Bridegroom whisper, "I have seen it all. I have been with you through it all. I have witnessed it all; I never left."
"I never left."
I tell you that your Bridegroom has always been with you as well, and about the mystery of the sin, of the burial, of the deformity, that will become the new note in an astounding, unrepeatable symphony of light; I tell you that you have never been alone, that your Bridegroom clings to you even as you hang in the darkness, and wishes to wed you still, and to lead you into the light, to heal you, to hear you.
He tells you that if you will let Him cut you down and if you take His hand, you will speak again, and sing, and that song will be shared, will fill the heavens with its intricate pattern of tone and word, will be an indispensable step within the Great Dance.
