Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist,
and into them enters suffering,
in order that they may have existence.
~Leon Bloy
I see these new heart chambers forming every day.
Spaces filling overwhelmed as if water frozen,
with hurt
and loss
and despair.
So I try
to help patients let go of
their suffering,
let it pass, let its ice melt down,
allow it to pass through,
forgiving, forgiven,
their hearts changed
by a grace
flowing warm
from new found gratitude.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
~Mark Twain
Little flower, but if I could understand what you are, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
~ Tennyson
Am I root, or am I bud? Am I stem or am I leaf? All in all, these are not me
but signs of God’s fruiting glory.
I am but the tears He shed as He broke
into blossom.
Definitely chocolate.
Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
…These things happen … the soul’s bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses …
The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.
~Jane Kenyon from “Twilight: After Haying”
Celebration is a sign of life in the rubble, the bliss of those arising from an ash heap to walk and breathe again. Heartache is the sight of death in the rubble, the suffering of those trapped and crushed by a roaring force too immense to imagine yet devastatingly real.
Bliss and suffering are bound together like the grasses; we are grasses torn from our roots, ravaged.
Tears flow as they must, wetting the stubble left behind like dew. We weep in sorrow for those lost; we weep in joy for those spared.
What else can a soul do but weep at parting and weep at welcoming?
These things happen, oh yes, these awe-full awful things, they happen.
Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
~Psalm 103: 15
The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
~G. K. Chesterton
…love has always sought to put back together that which hate has broken.
…our hands have always been able to heal as much as harm.
…since the dawn of humanity, each of us contains three people—
the angel, the demon, and the one who decides which we will obey.
~Billy Coffey
It should not require an act of evil for us to recognize the human capacity for love, caring and compassion. It should not take fearsome suffering and death of innocents to remind us all life is precious and worthy of our protection, when others would discard it.
We are created to choose sides. Our Creator chose to suffer to guarantee we are eternally worthy of His protection.
How then shall we choose?
…difficulties are magnified out of all proportion simply by fear and anxiety. From the moment we wake until we fall asleep we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands, and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf:
With sorrow and with grief…
God will not be distracted.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters from Prison
Every day I see college students who are so consumed by anxiety they become immobilized in their ability to move forward through the midst of life’s inevitable obstacles and difficulties. They become so stuck in their own overwhelming feelings they can’t sleep or eat or think clearly, so distracted are they by their symptoms. They self-medicate, self-injure and self-hate. Being unable to nurture themselves or others, they wither like a young tree without roots deep enough to reach the vast reservoir that lies untapped beneath them. In epidemic numbers, some decide to die, even before life really has fully begun for them.
I grieve for them in their distress. My role is to help find healing solutions, whether it is counseling therapy, a break from school, or a medicine that may give some form of relief. My heart knows the ultimate answer is not as simple as the right prescription.
We who are anxious are not trusting a Creator who does not suffer from attention deficit disorder and who is not distracted from His care for us even when we turn away in worry and sorrow. We magnify our difficult circumstances by staying so tightly into ourselves, unable to look beyond our own eyelashes. Instead we are to reach higher and deeper, through prayer, through service to others, through acknowledging there is power greater than ourselves.
So we are called to pray for ourselves and for others, disabling anxiety and fear and transforming it to gratitude and grace. No longer withering, we just might bloom.
“God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”
C.S. Lewis
Relentless, unstoppable, inescapable, inevitable, unavoidable, irrevocable, unalterable, unceasing love. It has always been, is now, and always will be.
It is a gift almost too much to bear knowing He bought it through suffering. Nothing I have done warrants such loving grace. Therefore I become inexorable too–nonstop and continuously–expressing gratitude, forgiveness, wonder.
The intolerable welcomed.
The inconceivable borne and born.
The incredible believed.
These things happen…the soul’s bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses….
The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.
~Jane Kenyon from Twilight–After Haying
So bound together–the sweetness and the suffering.
I have seen it in others and known it myself.
Renewal and rebirth come from ravage.
Already I am emptying out, not yet filling full from the lungs of eternity.
Breathing will be easy one day, so fresh, so cleansing, so infinite.
Until then,
I’m holding my breath tightly,
blessed by that last, sweet gasp.
Far from Love the Heavenly Father Leads the Chosen Child, Oftener through Realm of Briar Than the Meadow mild.
~Emily Dickinson
I know folks being dragged through the realm of briar right now. They are dealing with life-threatening disease, disintegration of relationships, significant mental health challenges or the results of random tragedy. The cruelty of so much earthly suffering cannot be easily explained nor dismissed. It feels “far from love” to be chosen to walk through a place that rips and tears away at one’s very flesh and spirit. Yet many of us are chosen to experience such trials rather than allowed to live life in the mild meadow.
The only consolation is that we are not alone on this path of pain. The Chosen Child, sent to walk alongside us through the realm of briar, bleeds with us, bleeds because of us, bleeds for us, bleeds when we have nothing left, ultimately bleeds so we no longer have to.
To be everlastingly filled, we must first be emptied.
To find our forever home, we must admit we have lost our way and need rescue.
Accompanied through the realm of briar, we suffer wounds that only Love can heal.
Barnstorming 