A Gateway

There is a pain wedged beneath my ribs, radiating like heat into the rest of my body. My heart rests on it. Together, they make a formidable weight.

I want to banish the pain. Obliterate it. Erase it.

All of my energy turns towards it, intense and focused. The rest of me is left feeling tired, weak, drained.

I drag myself around. Then I remember this is also a gateway, this pain. It is a gateway into discovering, as I have so many times before, only to promptly forget anew, that there is no separation between that pain and me. There is no me versus it.

I pass through the gateway, armed with all of my “going on an adventure” gear, including my curiosity. And the pain begins softening, dissolving into my tissue.

And my heart, it is floating free.

Photo credit: Kevin Tuck at RGBstock.com

Nothing To Be Done

My friend Isabel’s marriage of 20 years is ending.  My friend Danielle’s daughter is scheduled for major surgery which she direly needs. My friend Janine needs to do another test to see if cancer has returned to her body, only this time she is a widow with a young son to care for.  I could go on and on: another friend can’t find a job, yet another can’t conceive.

I could feel despair, because I love them, every one; because I wish I could do something to give them back the sense of certainty, comfort, that they used to have, that they yearn for.  At least, I wish I could do something that would make them feel all better, the way I did for my babies when they toppled and I stood them up, dusted them off and set them loose again with a kiss.  But I can’t. There’s nothing that I could do that would come even close to that.

Except, hold loving energy for each of them, see them as their brightest, most radiant selves, and, simply, be present to them.

I know this, because, when I have been drowning, breathless and scared, I could feel them doing it for me. Their presence created a modest, but vital, space for me to be able to take a deep breath and remember my Self.

Nothing changed. And yet, somehow, it did.  I was held, and that made all the difference.

Photo Credit: Muriel M Sawicki

I Don’t Know How to Look at Suffering

Sometimes I understand that loss and pain are good for me, when they force me to stretch my neck beyond the boulder that hides me and I can see a whole new landscape unfurled beyond, inviting. Sometimes, today, I don’t know how to look at suffering and love what is there. I don’t know how to feel gratitude for the breaking, for the loss.

When I allow myself to intuit the depths of my fear, my impotence, then I understand how easy it is to defer to anger. I feel how much strength it takes for me to open myself, truly, to empathy. The question is: Am I willing to summon it?

I need to go inside to that core place, from which I find my way, where my Truth rests. But, sometimes, today, I find no real comfort there. And yet, I am aware of the Wisdom in openness, in empathy, and vulnerability. I am familiar with the gifts that they can bring.

And… I can perceive my strength, hidden in there, somewhere.  If I stay long enough, I know that I can choose them all, some time, when I find that hidden strength.  Or the will to summon it.

©David Ritter at RGBStock.com

Inference

I am an open wound, rubbed raw. I cannot pull my thoughts from the flaming pain. The whole of me is present only to this affliction, in this broken, bleeding moment. There can be nothing beyond, no before, no transcendence.

And yet, when it is my sister who is seized in pain, how easily I see the landscape of her path, the places she has yet to reach, where she can wash out the cuts, where she will find comfrey to soothe the lacerations, the places she will reach when the scars have become skin, thickened and rough.

How surely I know that she has the capacity to reach into her depths and find aspects of herself she doesn’t yet know, strengths and wisdom to drag her off the ground, prop her up until she can feel her feet. What certainty I have that she can heal, even if she never resumes her former stance, if she never walks in her familiar gait. I know she can be whole.

I comfort myself now, my own heart’s arms around me, my own voice whispering soothing sounds in my own ear.

I comfort myself now with the  knowledge that, if wholeness and healing can be true for my sister, then I can claim them also for myself.

©finchj at wikipedia.org

Breakdown and Wholeness

I am  seeing breakdown in many places around me. Many bodies in pain and dis-ease. Deaths. Hearts breaking. The Earth convulsing.

A time for tears.

I can offer no comfort. My words are lost in the gulf of emotions. I hold energy for wholeness and healing, I radiate Reiki. I extend my hand.

And I am filled with gratitude for the connections of the human heart. I can feel in my body, in the energy field around it, how love holds us up. I see how connection to one another strengthens us enough to remember… we are not alone, we are not only bodies with minds, we can prevail through pain and continue to grow towards wholeness.

 

 

 

 

Celebrating International Women’s Day

Today I am celebrating International Woman’s Day. I am a woman. When I think this, a thrill of energy pulses through me, a massive power. Since I have had the ability to articulate my thoughts, I have been a feminist, which is someone who believes that everyone (man or woman, human or otherwise) should have the freedom to express their Self as they choose, to be Whole and honored for their Beingness.

It pains me to recognize that this freedom is far from the experience of a great majority of our world. And it pains me especially to live in a country that is proud to call itself the land of the free, the home of equality, but in which we can’t legislate on equal pay, a woman is raped every three minutes, and homelessness is a very real part of millions of lives (the vast majority of our homeless are women and children) and in which we continue to fight wars that lay the brunt of their deadly effects at women’s feet.

I have tried to make this blog a place for celebration and gratitude, a place to which we, you and I, can come to be uplifted and inspired. But it is also a place to speak my Truth, and sometimes my Truth is hard. Today I am full of the fire of the Divine Feminine (it is in all of us, male or female),  this fire that compels me to continue to find my own ways, concrete, effective ways, to bring to whomever I can the freedom, the meaningful freedom, to be Whole and express their Self however they choose to.