To Walk Alongside

josehomer

thebuds

None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.

Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.

What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.
~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”

outforawalk1

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill

mapleponygold

We are born hollering and suddenly alone,
already aware of our emptiness
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of our fallen world~
air that is never enough.

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapses starving for understanding,
still hollering in our loneliness
and heart
broken.

So we mend ourselves
through our walk with others
also broken,
we patch up our gaps
by knitting the scraggly fragments
of lives lived together.
We become the crucial glue
boiled from gifted Grace,
all our holes
somehow made holy.

brothers

eaglecouple2

3musketeers2

homerhooter

8 thoughts on “To Walk Alongside

  1. Thank you Emily for your beautiful words, references and pictures. They are a gentle balm to my soul in a hectic, crazy sometimes scary world. God is using you lovely one and His grace pours from your fingers.

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  2. Dear Emily,
    Oct 17th was my birthday, so this post seemed especially delicious and meaningful to me, even though I didn’t get to read it til today, Sunday. I just love your writing, your photos, the other people’s writings you include in this blog. Thank you for it all. May Yahweh refresh and mend you as you help others in the mending process.
    love
    Victoria

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