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Passion: The Authentic Muse
reprinted from Simple Abundance:
A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
by Sarah Ban Breathnach

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person.
- John Boorman

Many women long to live passionate lives, to be swept away - but at a safe distance and in small doses. That's why we are drawn to juicy novels, three-hanky movies, soap operas, platonic flirtations, and personality journalism that glorifies lives larger than our own. Passion after all, means the abandonment of reason in the reckless pursuit of pleasure: rushing off with an Argentine polo-playing paramour instead of picking up the afternoon car pool.

Passion is wild, chaotic, unpredictable. Permissive. Escessive. Obesessive. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Passionate women can't help but exult in their emotions, revel in their desires, howl at the moon, act out their fantasies, boil a pet rabbit.

The rest of us have real life responsibilities that leave little room (or so we think) for giving in to passionate impulses: runny noses to wipe, dogs to walk, FedEx pickup deadlines to meet, Brownie snacks to prepare, sales conferences to attend, orthodontist appointments to make, summer camp forms to fill out, trains to catch, supper to put on the table. There goes the day. There goes a life, and not with a bang, but a whimper and a wine.

What we don't realize is that passion is the muse of authenticity. It's the primordial, pulsating energy that infuses all of life, the numinous presence made known with every beat of our hearts. Passion does not reveal herself only in clandestine, romantic, bodice-ripping cliches. Passion's nature is also cloaked in the deep, subtle, quiet, and committed: nursing a baby, planting a rose garden, preparing a special meal, caring for a loved one who is ill, remembering a friend's birthday, persevering in a dream. Every day offers us another opportunity to live passionate lives rather than passive ones, if we will bear witness to passion's immutable presence in the prosaic. If we will stop denying ourselves pleasure. If, as James Joyce's heroine Molly Bloom whispered, we can only learn to say "...and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Passion is holy - a profound Mystery that transcends and transforms through rapture. We need to accept that a sacred fire burns within, whether we're comfortable with this truth or not. Passion is part of Real Life's package because we were created by Love, for Love, to Love. If we do not give outward expression to our passions, we will experience self-immolation - the spontaneous combustion of our souls.

Did you know that both the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, and the Jewish Talmud teach that we will be called to account for every permissible pleasure life offered us but which we refused to enjoy while on earth? Dorothy L. Sayers, the deeply spiritual English writer, believed, "The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless."

Go now. Depart in peace and sin no more.