In that half-asleep, half-awake state, I had the image of
the word pain as a call to Place Attention Inside Now. A few moments later, arising for the day, I
was sitting in silence with my journal on my lap (as is my morning schedule). I
opened a daily inspirational book (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening) and read: “Until the heart becomes an inlet,
it cannot be free….[P]ain comes from measuring the inevitable events of life
against some idea of how we imagine things are supposed to be…. Life is hard
enough without viewing all our pain as evidence of some basic insufficiency we
must endure… All spiritual warriors have
a broken heart, alas, must have a broken heart—because it is only through the
break that the wonder and mysteries of life can enter us…. In daily life we are
judged, discounted, and even pitied for glories that only we can affirm.”
My recent past has been filled with self-nagging. It
feels as though a fog is lifting and I am seeing myself and the events through
the lens of that broken heart. In the same way that a child will be terrified
by the shadow cast on the wall, and have nothing to fear, what I am seeing now
looks nothing like what I had imagined it being.
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| Immature Brown Pelicans at the Van Meter's in St. James City on Pine Island |
Rachael Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, has written another marvelous book, My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of
Strength, Courage, and Belonging. In a chapter titled “The Emperor’s New
Clothes,” she writes about the broken hearts of a mother and father following
the death of their five year-old son, Timmy. At Timmy’s funeral, the pastor
encouraged each person to allow his or her pain to touch him or her in a unique
way, to draw strength from knowing we are not alone in that pain.
Each person was told the pain would help us love our
children, each other, and life itself. That is living of life through our
broken hearts. I have used the phrase, “Our hearts only break in one direction:
open.” That did not come to me through the lens of a broken heart, for I have
not buried my five year-old child, and, in the grand scheme of things, I have
not had a difficult life.
Remen writes: “Spiritual awakening does not change life;
it changes suffering.” Perhaps knowing, at some deep level, the depth of love
that rushes into the heart that is broken open, I had been, like the shadow cast
upon the wall, seeing the pain in my life as much larger than it really was,
wanting all along, to love with all my heart, my mind, my soul, and my strength.
I will begin now to see pain—physical or emotional, mental or spiritual—as what
it really is, a sacred invitation to place
attention inside now….
