Category: Pain

Sharp Edges of a Round Globe

Published on by Marilyn7 Comments

What is it about Sunday afternoons in winter that bring on such melancholy? I remember writing a couple of years ago that if Sunday mornings are a time when Heaven meets earth in Divine Liturgy, Sunday afternoons feel opposite. They feel cold and hard, as though the warm grace of the morning has frozen, leaving only ice and cold.

Truth is, I have felt this way since I can remember. It began in boarding school. Sunday afternoon was the time for resting. The entire hostel was quiet. As I think back on this, it is quite extraordinary. How can that many children in one place be quiet? But we were, whether it be from fear of punishment or just the intensity of the week catching up with us, Sunday afternoons had us in our dormitory rooms, curled up with books, taking a nap with a favorite stuffed animal, or hiding tears of homesickness because that is when we missed our moms and dads so much. As I would sit in my room, a yearning sadness enveloped me, and it has remained that way since I was a child.

Today I feel like that boarding school kid once again, a yearning sadness surrounding me and threatening to overwhelm.

Certainly, there is enough to be sad about. I feel the sharp edges of a round globe, like shards of glass are stuck into different cities and regions tearing into people and places. It is too big for most to bear. Besides the global pain is the individual pain that each one of us knows, some of it too difficult to share with even our close friends. And yet I cannot believe that a silent and cruel giant creator is playing with our globe and us like we are toys, wanting to wound those toys like a child bent on cruelty toward inanimate objects.

I cannot believe in a cruel creator because the thread of goodness that I see, feel, and sense is still too strong. I see it in the kindness of a neighbor. I feel it in a friend putting her arm around me as she sees tears well up in my eyes. I sense it in the beauty of the hymns of the church. I see it in the bravery of men and women who are caring for the suffering around the world. And I see it as the sun rises each day in all these places – whether or not we see color through the clouds. But far beyond what I see, feel, and sense is an enduring faith that God is good, and in his goodness I can rest.

This work of faith brings me once again to pray the prayers of the church – prayers that have been passed down through centuries of faith by people who lived in profoundly difficult times. Prayers that I have gratefully received, knowing that I don’t have the words I need. Prayers that are large enough and strong enough to cover a round globe with sharp edges. I leave one of those with you today, knowing that on this melancholy Sunday afternoon they give me hope and help me move beyond my melancholy to a place of peace and rest.

Remember Lord all your servants who are in pain, who are in despair, who are sick, who are poor, who have lost a loved one, who have been wronged, who are by themselves, who have been slandered,  who are captives, who are hungry, who are refugees, who have lost their ways, who have been deceived, who are unprotected, who are in prison…Remember Lord all the nations of the world.  Keep them in your embrace and cover and protect them from war and evil.

St. Paisios

Lenten Journey – Healing Comes in the Trying

Published on by Marilyn3 Comments

I don’t know when the dawn will break for you or for me, but I know that the healing comes in the trying. And that even in the dark we have to keep practicing our callings. Whatever they are. We have to keep doing the things we were made to do. The daily acts of creativity and honesty and service as much for what they bring about inside us as for the good they do in the world. Practice your vocation and calling whatever you understand that to be because the practice of it will keep you connected and to the God who planted those things inside you. 

Shauna Niequist

Last Monday, on the first day of Orthodox Lent, I had a wisdom tooth extracted. As the dental surgeon’s assistant was giving me instructions, she reminded me that the first few days I would get steadily better, and then by days 3-5, it would feel much worse. “It’s like so many things,” she said. “You get worse before you get better. To heal, you have to go through a process.”

I didn’t think much about it that day, so focused was I on the procedure and on the wads of gauze and local anesthesia that made me sound like a cartoon character. But days four and five came, and though I thought I would be unique and spared the pain of those middle days, the pain came on with a vengeance. The only thing I could do was follow the paper of instructions given to me as I left the dental office. Ibuprofen, rinsing with saline, soft foods, and waiting. I had to keep doing those things because I knew that ultimately, they would aid in the healing, and the healing would indeed come. I had to keep trying.

“The healing comes in the trying.”

But on Saturday I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying and call the dental assistant and say “This isn’t working. I need something else. I’m not healing.” In truth, I was. I just didn’t like how it was going. I wanted to speed up the process. I was sick of the pain. I didn’t want to believe the dental assistant’s words.

Today is a new day. In the world of tooth extractions, the dawn broke and with it was a tenderness replacing the pain. I know now that every day will be a bit easier.

Though they are nothing to do with healing from a tooth extraction, Shauna Niequist’s words above are not unlike those of the dental assistant. They are both about process, about doing all those things in the dark that we learned to do in the light.

If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I’ve had some healing going on during the past few years. Healing from pain far worse than that of a tooth extraction. Every time I think the dawn is about to break, it seems the clouds come over and instead of the brilliant colors of sunrise, it’s all greys and muted colors. In the midst of this, I’m continuing to learn what it means to keep trying. To make plans and follow through with them. To cry heavy tears in the shower and then get dressed. To pray soul-aching prayers and then get up and make dinner. To wait for answers and then actively process through writing. The dawn has not yet broken, but God is present, gently reminding me that healing comes in the trying.

Reminding me that someday, the “grey horizons must grow light. It is only the immediate scene that shouts so loudly and insistently.”

Author’s Note: This season is Lent for those of us in Christian Traditions that celebrate Lent. Lent is perhaps a bit like a tooth extraction. You know you need it, but initially you dread it. Lent is also about believing that the dawn will break, the resurrection will come, and with it – a healing greater than we can even imagine.

*Alfred Delp

Weary of Walking in the Dark

Published on by Marilyn3 Comments

At the time of darkness, more than anything else kneeling is helpful.

St. Isaac the Syrian

I’m weary, and I wonder about you. Perhaps you are weary as well.

When I try and get to the bottom of this I realize that I’m weary of doing the next right thing. I’m weary of praying for my enemies and loving those who hurt me. I’m weary of family fractures. I’m weary of getting up every day and working. I’m weary of walking forward with so many unknowns.

Most of all, I’m weary because all seems dark and God seems so very distant.

Job’s friends would stop me right now. “Have you looked at your life?” they would ask. There must be some unconfessed sin. There must be some reason why God is distant, why all is dark. But here’s the thing – to believe that all of the dark and difficult things we go through are a result of our behavior is distorted theology. Jesus’ words in the book of Matthew are clear: “for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” In fact, in the Old Testament, the Psalmist is constantly asking why the evil prosper and do well, seemingly free of trouble, something that turns a health and wealth gospel upside down.

Sometimes there is not an earthly answer. Sometimes all we get is silence. Sometimes darkness is everywhere we turn.

It’s in this season that I have taken to reading the book Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. This book is an interesting study on darkness. When asked in an interview what her ‘working definition’ of darkness was, she said this:

Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.

Barbara Brown Taylor in Religion News Services 2012

Taylor’s search led her to explore darkness literally and metaphorically. Through exploring a cave; being led in complete darkness by a blind person, physically experiencing life through her other senses; and by spending the night in a solitary cabin with no light to be found, she experienced the physical absence of light. Beyond that is her deep exploration of “dark nights of the soul” and how the physical experience of dark can perhaps teach us something of the spiritual. Her search is not to diminish the need for light, rather, she wants the reader to appreciate the importance of darkness both physically and spiritually.

The book is marvelously free of platitudes and that in itself is a gift for me in this season. But it is also a reminder of a truth I know, but regularly need reminders. When we are in hard, dark places, God may seem distant, but He is as fully present as in the light. He dwells there with us. Psalm 139 verse 12 reassures me of this: “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

So here in the dark, where I am exhausted in weariness, where I have no words, and where the way forward seems absent of light, will you join me in a quest to believe it is okay, to believe that he is here with us in the dark? To sit as companions, free of clichéd conversation, and know he can be trusted? I don’t have much beyond that for you today – but perhaps that is enough.

“Even when light fades and darkness falls–as it does every single day, in every single life–God does not turn the world over to some other deity…Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.”

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

Fractures

Published on by Marilyn10 Comments

I experienced two fractures in my life, both occuring when I was a child. The first was my leg. I fell off a bunkbed as a tender, evidently fragile-boned five year old. I won’t go into the details of how I sort of threw myself off the bed, angry at my mom, instead I’ll focus on the pain, the intense pain that followed. We were in the city of Jacobabad in Pakistan, far from good medical care. My parents weren’t sure how serious this was so we waited overnight. I will never forget that night. I came in and out of sleep, pain waking me up at every move, my pain medication that of my mom’s soothing voice reading to us from the book Rainbow Garden. The next day we drove along bumpy roads to get to a mission hospital in the city of Sukkur. I ended up with a cast on my leg from ankle to thigh.

The second fracture happened when I was 11 while playing the child’s game “Steal the Bacon.” I got the bacon, but I fell onto my left wrist. Again I felt the intense pain, the pain of a fractured bone.

You never forget the excruciating pain of a physical fracture. Medical professionals describe bone pain as deeper, sharper, and more intense than muscle pain. Yet, as hard as that pain is, emotional fractures in families, friendships, and societies cause far more pain. And unlike fractured bones, a cast or brace put on by a skilled physician is not available.

While many have never had fractured bones, my guess is that most of us know the pain of fractured relationships. Most of us know the pit in the stomach, the sleepless nights, the grieving too deep for tears that comes as a result of these fractures. We would give anything for a cast, anything for pain medication, anything to relieve the deep ache.

I’m in a season of fractures, fractures that I don’t know what to do with, fractures that cloud my vision and hurt to the bone. These are fractures that have few answers. In addition, I live in a society that has profound fractures. Fractures that, though they be societal, have shards that reach into families and friendships. These too are fractures with few answers.

And if the fractures are not difficult enough, the public response is deafening. So deafening that I find I can’t think for myself.

Layered in with all the fractures are people. Beloved, beautiful, made in God’s image people. People who on one hand drive me crazy and on the other fill me with compassion. People who come with profoundly difficult stories, people who are angry, people who are rejoicing, and many, many who don’t know how to show love.

I was walking by Boston’s Harbor yesterday evening with a heavy heart, thinking about fractures and about people. There is a public art display that has just been put up around the Harborwalk. It features the sculptures of Michael Alfano – a gifted artist. All of the sculptures are extraordinary, but one in particular hit my soul. A dove on one side turns into a hawk on the other. In between are two outstretched hands. The inscription says this:

In Peace Offering, the dove conveys the hope for peace, while its tail transforms into a hawk, representing hostility. The dove’s wings become open hands, which might be ours, in an asking, weighing, or offering pose. Or they might belong to a larger force that welcomes two people to dialogue.

Michael Alfano – Peace Offering on Harborwalk

“The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true but few can put it into practice.”

The Tao

I felt extraordinary peace as I saw this sculpture and read the description, for this is a piece that challenges me to keep my hands and my heart open – open to change, open to dialogue, open to listen, and above all – open to show love.

The battles and fractures in our hearts rarely take place in public. They take place in the dead of night, when noone is around to witness them. They take place in the early morning hours of begging for mercy. They take place in the wordless prayers of our souls.

I don’t know what your wordless prayers are today. We can only know our own, and that is enough. What I do know is that I long to be a dove in a world that rewards hawks. I long to open my hands in a peace offering in a world that asks me to close them. I long to see God and people first, and the pain of my own fractures second.

I long for the day where the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the broken are made whole, and hearts no longer break from fractures. Until that day I hold to the comfort that comes through the author of all beauty and art and I offer up my hands to the One who knows best how to use them.

[Image by Carola68 Die Welt ist bunt…… from Pixabay.]

[Sculpture Photo Credit – Michael Alfano website photo by Adrien Sipos]

Grieving and the Casserole Ladies

Published on by Marilyn5 Comments

Several years ago, a colleague at my work place lost her father to a tragic accident. It was right after Thanksgiving and the family was paralyzed with grief. Tragedies during holidays are a degree more painful as shock mixes with holiday expectation, creating a numb disconnect. A couple of day’s after the tragedy, my colleague’s roommate, a dear friend of mine, called me and said “I don’t know what to do! There are no church ladies. No church ladies means no casserole ladies! How are we going to help this family?”

Initially I responded in stunned silence. It has been years since my friend went to church, so why the church ladies, the casserole ladies? “What do you mean?” I asked. My friend went on to say that growing up she knew that whenever there was something hard or life changing, like funerals or births, there was a guarantee that the family would not have to worry about meals. Whether they knew the family or not made no difference, the casserole church ladies would show up like fairy godmothers with delicious and plentiful food. With everything else that a grieving family or community was going through, at least they wouldn’t have to wonder how to feed people. Like magic, casseroles, brownies, cookies, seven-layer salads, jello salads, rolls, bread, and Robert Redford cake would appear at their doorways. There was no expectation of conversation and no expectation of reciprocity. It was a “We are so sad. We are so sorry. Here! Have a brownie!” It wasn’t to minimize the grief, rather it was tangible support in the form of food.

I knew in that moment exactly what she was talking about. I’ve been a recipient of the goodness of the casserole ladies and have experienced this tangible comfort many times. One time it was an entire Christmas feast, another time a week’s worth of freezable meals. Just one long year ago during a family crisis, my son opened the door to a massive lasagna and huge container of salad, enough food to feed a family of 30. Words would have been ineffective and difficult, but food? Food was perfect.

Yesterday a friend sent me the cooking newsletter that comes out of the New York Times. It was a couple of paragraphs – simple and timely, titled “Grief and Cooking.” There it was – a perfect description of the role that food plays when there is a tragedy or crisis.

Food plays a central role in our reaction to tragedy, to death and grieving. It’s why casseroles appear on the doorsteps and countertops of those experiencing it, why we feel the urge to roast chickens or assemble lasagnas when the news is grim. Food is comfort of a sort, and fuel as well, for anger and sorrow alike. We cook to provide for those we love and for ourselves. In the activity itself we strive to find relief, strength, resolve.

Sam Sifton from NYTimes newsletter: Grief and Cooking

Right now, more than anything I wish I could make a casserole for the grieving families of Uvalde, Texas. where I imagine sleepless nights barely ending as nightmare days begin, an entire community forever changed. I wish I could make them a roast chicken and stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce and finish it off with my specialty apple cake. Or maybe a delicious lasagna with fresh garlic bread, because when you are grieving, carbs are necessary. Like many of you who are miles away, unconnected to the tragedy other than the human capacity of empathy and grief recognition, I still long for concrete ways to enter into their suffering.

I can’t make a casserole and a loaf of bread for the grieving families of Uvalde. But I can make a casserole and a loaf of bread for a neighbor who is hurting. I can take the heart and warmth of my kitchen and cook it into food. I can translate love, care, and prayers for courage into bread dough, delivering a loaf packed full of empathic goodness to someone in my world who is desperate for comfort.

And as I measure and whisk, I will pour my prayers for Uvalde into the mix, praying that somehow, as impossible as it seems, comfort will come.

[Image by RitaE from Pixabay]

Healing Through Beauty

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

I may be biased, but Charlestown is the loveliest place to live in all of Boston. It has charm, character, and beauty all wrapped up in a complete package. It is a city space with a small town feel. Neighbors know and care for each other, people say hello as they walk their babies and their dogs, and the owners of the bodega down the street laugh goodnaturedly as I try my Spanish which is limited to Ola! and Gracias!

Though every season is lovely, springtime feels particularly so as forsythia blooms bright yellow, quickly followed by flowering trees, azaleas, daffodils, and tulips. An already friendly place becomes friendlier, the sheer joy of living is present everywhere.

Charlestown helped to heal my heart last spring. As half of me lay in a hospital bed not two miles away, the other half walked the streets of Charlestown with one of my sons, marveling at how beauty, joy, and tragedy could be so mixed up together. Tears that I thought would never stop dried on my cheeks, joy exploding like the blossoms around me.

The Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wrote the words “Beauty will save the world” many years ago. Those words became my reality, for in the midst of the tragedy of last year, beauty was exactly what I needed. Beauty saved me.

Beauty healed my eyesight and my heart. Beauty called me into a greater reality than the one that I saw, the one that I lived.

Beauty healed my eyesight and my heart. Beauty called me into a greater reality than the one that I saw, the one that I lived. Beauty tenderly woke me to the Beautiful One and to a coming reality where there will be no more death, suffering, crying or pain.

As I walk the streets today, sun glistening off dew drops on newly sprouted buds, I am in a different place. The tragedy of last year has given way to the hard work of healing. The beauty all around welcomes me as I continue to walk in faith, faith that the pain of today and the fight to see beauty will someday give way to a forever that is far more beautiful and less fleeting than springtime in Charlestown.

Chaste and ardent eros for the Beautiful is the first task of human life, and falling in love with Beauty is the beginning of every adventure that matters

Dr. Timothy Patitsas in The Ethics of Beauty

And so I ask you: When has beauty healed your heart?

Sometimes All You Need is Kleenex

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

My friend Jaenia tells a poignant story about going to a doctor’s appointment not too long ago. A couple of things about Jaenia – she is a strong woman. She loves her people well and bears the burdens of others, always offering hope. What some don’t know is that all of this comes at a personal cost.

At the time of the visit, she was going through some difficult things in her personal life. Just prior to arriving, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She pulled herself together long enough to sign in, but the minute she got into the exam room and saw the doctor, she choked up again.

“What’s going on?” said her doctor. And with that, the tears began to fall again. The doctor reached for a box of Kleenex and handed it to her. Jaenia did what most of us do during these situations. She began to apologize. The provider stopped her and said “It matters. All of this matters.” And then she allowed her to cry.

“It matters. All of this matters” This is wholistic care at its best.

Sometimes we think we have to have all the right words, that if we don’t we dishonor the one who is in front of us with their tears flowing. But sometimes, all we need to do is give kleenex and wait. Our waiting is a nonverbal affirmation that the person in our midst matters, their pain is acknowledged through patient waiting and kleenex.

This is part of what it is to bear witness to stories, whether they be stories of pain or of joy. I often talk about the ingredients to active listening and bearing witness being about the head, the heart, and the body. We listen with our heads, our intellect, the brain we’ve been gifted, the knowledge we have; we listen with our hearts, the pain and joy of our own experiences moving out of self absorption and into an empathy for the one in front of us; and we listen with our physcial selves, our bodies tuned in to the story that we are now honored to hear.

Kleenex, patient waiting, bearing witness with our heads, hearts, and bodies – it all matters. It’s what makes fractured hearts heal, one person at a time.

The Stories Behind Our Silence

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

It’s been quiet here. It feels eerily quiet to me, though for those of you who read – the silence may be welcome. No one needs more noise in their lives. But the quiet feels strange to me because so much of my processing is done through writing.

Whenever my writing goes silent, there is a story behind the silence. I would think that this is true for most of us. Though everyone doesn’t process through writing, we all go through journeys where our inner world and trauma don’t reflect our outward circumstances, where there are stories behind our stepping away from life.

Some things are not for public consumption. In a world that more and more demands our every thought, our every hurt and pain spewed out through whatever public means possible, it feels important to say this.

Yet, too often, people insist on the story. They seemingly can’t give grace without the details. It makes me wonder how we can grow to be the kind of people who can honor the silent stories, giving grace for behavior and actions that don’t reflect what we know about the person’s life. How can we honor the stories behind the silence, knowing that people must feel safe in order to share? How can we become people who don’t operate off a sort of voyeurism, insisting on the hard ingredients instead of offering unconditional comfort?

It was a number of years ago when I first discovered the difference between outside circumstances and silent stories. It was in trying to figure out how I could help a friend. Her outside circumstances were seemingly ideal. A “put together” family – the kind that takes pictures of all their kids with blue jeans and white shirts on a pristine beach – a good job, beautiful kids, talent beyond believability. But behind her perfect smile was an undefinable sadness. At first I was impatient and frustrated. Of all the people I knew, she was the last person who seemed to have a reason to be sad. It was in the midst of frustration, that I felt a strong rebuke and challenge to look beyond these seemingly perfect circumstances. I realized that there must be more to the story then her observable beautiful life.

In truth, I should have been quicker to identify this. I say this because I too have been judged as one who has “nothing to complain about.” Judged for being a baby who can’t cope with the perfect life I’d been given. There were silent stories behind my observable “good” life. Stories that were difficult to share, and even more difficult to live.

The stories remained silent until I trusted a friend enough to reveal them.

Whether others give us freedom for silence or not, there are time honored and tested verses from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes that offer space for these seasons of silence:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

May we strive to be people of the seasons. People who honor all of the times in our lives, including the stories behind the silence – may we be people who offer the gifts of grace, comfort, compassion, and hope, all given without expectation, without insisting on details. And through these gifts may stories be heard, silence give way to a voice, and above all, the seasons of hope and healing be restored.