This morning I woke with a sadness like lead in my bones. It was the same sadness I’d taken to bed with me last night, a sadness so deep I could barely breath, a sadness about the loss of a future I’d been working towards for years. Like a shroud, it weighed me down as I pulled the covers close around my head and sobbed.
When I was a little girl I took offense at the suggestion that adversity carries seeds of redemption. By redemption I mean the grace and truth of God’s love that actually keeps company with whatever circumstances arise in our lives. My childlike perspective was that if everyone knew kindness and lived kindness, there’d be no sorrow and we could release all negativity from the world. It was that easy. Why couldn’t my loved ones get it right? It was just a matter of will, after all. I wanted everyone around me to open their eyes to the wonders and blessings of life. But of course it didn’t go like that most days, except when we packed up our belongings and headed out on an adventure in search of natural wonders…our vacation once a year.
Most days I escaped into imaginative play as a way to hold back the offending darkness that hung over the people I loved most. There, in my imagination, I acted out the nurturing and loving relationships I craved. I’m sure that I could find a diagnostic label for my forays into imagination in one of my daughter’s thick social work textbooks, but whatever they might be called, they kept me safe.
But now I’m well into the middle years of my life and intimately acquainted with sorrows, with shame, grief, and loss. I’ve even practiced staying with groundlessness ~~ leaning into it~~ as the wise Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron teaches. I know that if I allow myself to taste it and not turn away or reach for something sweeter, I might experience a fleeting moment of compassion for all people everywhere, who just like me, as Pema says, are weighed down by the trials of daily living and are longing for comfort ~~ and for release. And if I can stay with it through all the difficult emotions that arise, something else, something fresh might just enter. For me that freshness is the Divine Consciousness, God, the Oneness, the Light that knows no divisions or separations and pervades all things. Blesses all things.
And so I put my feet on the floor and quietly agreed to walk into whatever arose, the sadness still so heavy, so raw, the disbelief still so present as yesterday’s tape played over and over in my head. I sent out a few tentative emails, wishing, more than anything else, to allow some scrap of tenderness to loosen the tight bands around my heart. Gentle replies began to arrive, messages filled with tender words, wisdom, and concern. Eventually I picked up the phone and made an appointment with a wise and compassionate healer.
And as I walked tentatively and gratefully through the hurt and the fear and on into the light of this day, grace, those perfect, tiny seeds of redemption, began to sprout and take root in the hidden recesses of my heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment