Skip to main content

sadness

I grasp at joy and avoid sadness. It's not unique to me.  It is the human condition.  We cling to imagined good and resist the uncomfortable.  I sit here, packing my belongings again, my heart aching at the prospect of leaving my mountain.  I sit not knowing.  I look out at a misty horizon, uncertain.  Where will we live?  Can I afford a house?  How will I support the boys?  What is all of this about?  Will I know/experience love?  These questions rise and fall.  When I try to answer each one, my body constricts in fearful response.  In its somatic wisdom it whispers the simple truth, I don't know.  The mind is unsatisfied with not knowing and worry is born.  The truth remains.  I don't know.  And so instead of "taking thought", I wrap my arms around myself and feel.  Sadness.  Loneliness.  Joy.  Hopefulness. Fear.  Regret.  Longing.  Doubt.  All of it.  When there is nothing left to resist, what remains?  Life.

Comments

wind said…
I cry with you, ache with you, am emptied beside you. Thank God for arms that hold when all else seems cold. Blessed arms that hold the warmth of our longing, and the aliveness of our tears.
September 18, 2012 at 10:48 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more