A friend noticed I often allude to healing in my reflections and Dharma talks & sermons, and asked me to elaborate a bit.
For me there is indeed a world of hurt, and we’re up to our eyeballs in it.
Now, the world is also what it is. And in talking about hurt or healing I’m not talking about hurricanes or earthquakes. I’m talking about our human universe and what we encounter within the world of longing and meaning, hope and aspiration…
Our human encounter is buffeted and tossed, bruised, and banged; and somewhere along the line all of us, every precious one of us is damaged. You. me. No one escapes. If you think otherwise, you’re a master of denial. And, while that might be a pretty good strategy for a while, in the long haul it will betray you. I invite us all to not turn away from the hurt, the hurts.
And from that a next step.
My sense the reason these hurts become a great hurt that lives with us is simple.
These hurts arise out of our intuitions of wholeness and the fact of our separateness.
Wholeness.
I believe just about everyone, maybe everyone, has some body knowing we are connected, totally connected each of us with everyone and everything else. Why? I don’t know, although I have opinions. What matters is that our dreams are invaded by this deep knowledge of our source and home, our radical interdependence, our quiet moments proclaim it, instances of grace intrude it into our lives, singing the angel song of deepest connection.
Our bodies know the connection.
I invite the step of turning our hearts to noticing this unity. It is critical.
And, it isn’t enough.
There is that waking moment, where we are separate, where babies die and old people starve to death, where each and every one of us has experienced loss and longing, some harder than others, but none escapes. In this realm all of us are damaged goods.
We must not turn from that, either.
I invite the step of turning our hearts to noticing the separateness. It is critical.
And then a question comes to us, unbidden.
How can both be true?
A circle to square, no doubt.
And then the great invitation sung to us from before the creation of the heavens and the earth.
The words and the music proclaim a connection…
And a healing way can be found as we explore the connection.
In the Jewish tradition there is something called tikkun olam, healing of the world. I love the line. I think this work of healing, the world and everything within it is our calling as we’re born into the world of joy and sorrow, of unity and separateness.
It is found when we don’t turn away, but don’t rest in that spot, either.
Continue to open one’s heart, despite the siren song to shut down.
The path is through opening.
And more opening.
As we follow it all the way.
As we find the place to stand, to live, to love, and to die.
My dear friend Rod Meade Sperry just pointed me to the new album by Leonard Cohen, and with it a song, that sings some of what that place looks like.
Maybe this will help to make my feeble words a bit clearer…
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