Where the light enters you...

Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged wound. That's where
the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself.

Rumi

Long before we lost Julien, I loved this poem by Rumi.  "Keep looking at the bandaged wound. That's where the light enters you," he says.  I've discussed this poem many times but now that my bandaged places are bleeding through, I feel challenged to look again. 

In the days following Julien's birth, I remember telling myself, "just be present," again and again.  No matter what I was feeling (panic, nausea, hysteria) I knew I had to just stay with it -- to ride it like a horrible, inescapable roller-coaster.  I also kept reminding myself (and our daughter) that the most intense feelings would soon pass.

My dad had just died last year and those memories were all too fresh in my mind.  When Julien passed, I recalled everything I felt with my dad and knew just to hold on to the present moment for dear life.  With a white-knuckle grip, I told myself again and again that each day would get easier -- and it did.

This was a HUGE exercise in both trust and in acceptance.  By letting every emotion wash over me like a river, I think the pain became less intense.  I'm not saying that it doesn't still hurt.  It is to this day the most grueling thing I've ever felt... and turning into the pain sometimes seems like self-immolation.  Still, for me, just being here for all of it feels better than running away from it.

I think Rumi is suggesting that our suffering is our salvation.  Our capacity to feel deep sorrow and profound joy is what defines this human experience... and the two are inseparable.  But is all suffering salvific?  Perhaps.  

Without it, how would we discover grace?

Thanks

Listen 
with the night falling we are saying thank you 
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings 
we are running out of the glass rooms 
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky 
and say thank you 
we are standing by the water thanking it 
smiling by the windows looking out 
in our directions 

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging 
after funerals we are saying thank you 
after the news of the dead 
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you 
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators 
remembering wars and the police at the door 
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you 
in the banks we are saying thank you 
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us 
our lost feelings we are saying thank you 
with the forests falling faster than the minutes 
of our lives we are saying thank you 
with the words going out like cells of a brain 
with the cities growing over us 
we are saying thank you faster and faster 
with nobody listening we are saying thank you 
we are saying thank you and waving 
dark though it is

-  W. S. Merwin