For many years, I lived in a place slathered in altars. Honestly, I can’t think of a single room without one, or at the very least without something devotional nailed to a wall. Just walking into the house you’re greeted by a number of them, spread among the shelves full of books, nicknacks, yarn, and board games. And it’s in that room, next to an old winding clock on an upright piano, where you’ll find Our Lady of Sanity. She doesn’t seem to mind that Her frosted glass idol was made to be Mary the Mother of Jesus, or that Her style of name is also very similar to many of Mary’s titles. She just showed up one day well before I lived there offering to help people struggling with their mental health, and that’s pretty much all we know about Her.
The way I was taught propitiate Our Lady of Sanity is by dusting Her mostly-glass altar, which in a home with a wood burning stove is always a welcomed devotion. Once everything is wiped and placed back, a candle is lit behind Her idol, Her glass is filled with salt water, Her bell is rung, and a small prayer of petition (helpfully stashed on the altar) is read.
I’ve noticed a trend, though, when going through the usual cleaning routine. I found that I started struggling with putting things back where they belonged. She has quite a few items crammed into the space available to Her (it’s wise to let Her hold onto as many of our “marbles” as possible, literal and otherwise), so knowing where each thing went was a very helpful part of the reassembly process. Yet it got progressively harder each time for me until I tried putting every item onto another surface in the exact order I took it off, hoping to simply reverse the line up when I put them back. Somehow it didn’t work, and I accepted this was part of what interacting with Her altar was going to be. The next time I cleaned Her altar She gave me an answer as to why.
She wanted me to challenge my interpretation of sanity as a still, unmoving goal that sits upon a very tidy pedestal somewhere. Fair enough. This was something I could easily respect on a surface level. But as I returned Her items to wherever they ended up fitting I kept turning it over in my head, and I got a better view of the unhealthy ideal I had set for how I should be “fixed”. As someone who grew up with chronic physical and mental struggles this type of thinking seeps into all areas of my life, but it seemed that I had missed this particular version of it for a long time.
I sat with Her statement for a few days and watched as it expanded into a small lecture on the topic. The words sounded a lot sharper than how Her personality usually came across, but I figured it was safe to assume that was the fault of it having to find its way through my own melodramatic mental filter. At one point while sitting in a bus I began to scribble down what was forming and I asked Her if what I was writing was ok. We pulled to a stop at a traffic light and I sat back in my sideways seat, only to stare directly out at a smaller version of that classic statue of the Muses placed in an apartment window. If the inspiration was there, then write. I felt encouraged to stop obsessing over whether it was happening perfectly and to accept what had come though. So with my anxious stalling successfully expressed, this is what came out:
Do you think that sanity is a static thing? That there can only be change in madness? That in the eternal pull between Chaos and Order, All is rebuilt exactly the same Anymore than the pieces hold shape once they’ve fallen? No, their corners will snap, Their placement will switch, Their numbers will shift. Yet I will it whole each and every time, No matter how it fits. This is My work of art. Do not look to Me for safety and predictability, For I am as short-lived as the storms of your insanity, Those ones you wish to choke dry, Sacrificing the growth of your fields On the altar you built of Me to shelter your fears. I am no more than one side of the coin, As likely today as the reverse, As reliable as your panic attacks. I am not a state to be achieved. I am not an end point. I am not your home. But I am an engineer. I can show you how to build a dock from the bits and pieces, The gift of My power Strong and smooth and stable, Where you can hold fast when you see the clouds gather on the horizon, Your anchor secure in the earth. But just as it isn’t always raining, You can’t live your whole life tied down. This dock is meant to hold, And it is also meant to break, Swept away when there is finally a storm too forceful to weather. And there will always be that storm. That is always the way. So you can cling tight to My dock as it shatters With no idea where else to go, Building it surer each time from the wreckage Hoping only to better ignore the impermanence of My gifts. Or you can learn to come and go as you will, To ride the waves and read the winds, Mapping the coastline of your mind with tender measurements. But tonight your sails are tattered And your once full stores are rotted. Come to my dock, you weary traveler, But do not sink into willful blindness. Never mistake this kindness as your mastery over Me.