July 21: Poem from "Kyrie," Price We Pay, Grief

Poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

Once the world had had its fill of war,
in a secret wood, as the countryside lay stunned,
at the hour of the wolf and the vole, in a railroad car,
the generals met and put their weapons down.
Like spring it was, as word passed over all
the pocked and riven ground, and underground;
now the nations sat in a gilded hall,
dividing what they'd keep of what they'd won.

And so the armies could be done with war,
and soldiers trickled home to study peace.
But the old gardens grew a tough new weed,
and the old lives didn't fit as they had before,
and where there'd been the dream, a stranger's face,
and where there'd been the war, the empty sleeve.

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It's difficult trying to fit old lives into new experiences.  You can't go off to war and then return home without being irrevocably changed.  You can't live through a pandemic and accept a hug without flinching just a little after being deprived of human contact for so long.  You can't suffer the death of anything--a loved one, a marriage, a pet, a friendship--without becoming a little unwilling to open your heart up again.  Nine days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, in Saint Thomas Cathedral in Manhattan, a telegram from Queen Elizabeth II was read.  In it, she said, "Grief is the price we pay for love."

I find myself tonight at one of those junctures between love and grief.  Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, love can be snuffed out like a candle, and the resulting darkness settles on you like rain.  In that darkness, you start to build a wall around your heart.  Brick by brick.  Because you simply don't want to experience the pain of loss again.  It's the safe thing to do.  The human thing to do. 

It's raining tonight.  I can hear it tapping against my windows.  A deep, soaking rain.  Tomorrow morning, I'll wake to puddles, worms on the sidewalk, leaves studded with water.  And green everywhere. 

Because, no matter how high the wall, rain will come in the dark.  Something will grow.  To remind you of sunlight, and that you are loved.

And for that miracle, Marty, patron saint of bricks and mortar, gives thanks.

June 14: So Much Suffering, Difficult Weekend, Walt Whitman

Thomas Merton on suffering . . .

What could I make of so much suffering?  There was no way for me, or for anyone else in the family, to get anything out of it.  It was a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief.  You had to take it, like an animal.  We were in the condition of most of the world, the condition of men without faith in the presence of war, disease, pain, starvation, suffering, plague, bombardment, death.  You just had to take it, like a dumb animal.  Try to avoid it, if you could.  But you must eventually reach the point where you can't avoid it any more.  Take it.  Try to stupefy yourself, if you like, so that it won't hurt so much.  But you will always have to take some of it.  And it will all devour you in the end.

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.  The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most:  and his suffering comes to him from things so little and trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all.  It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.  This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves.

Yes, Merton hits it right on the head:  there is no way to avoid suffering.  Ignore that thing (or things) that causes you pain, and you will simply experience more pain.  Little things that nag at you, build up, and, eventually, eviscerate your capacity for any happiness.

Pretty heady stuff to start the week off with.  This weekend, however, has sort of forced me to confront some stuff in my life that I really didn't want to confront.  Stuff that's been simmering on the back burner and sort of boiled over last night.  I spent most of last night cleaning up the emotional mess it made on my stove.

Tomorrow is a new day, with new possibilities.  New chances for joy.  New chances for pain.  That's what living is all about, I guess.  You can't have one without the other.  They're opposite sides of the same coin.  (Sorry, I'm tired and can't think of a more original analogy.)  As Queen Elizabeth II said, "Grief is the price we pay for love."  If you open yourself up to loving someone, you open yourself up to the pain of losing them, as well.

So, you have a choice to make then.  Either you accept the cost of love, and therefore accept the pain of loss.  Or you avoid the possibility of love, and thereby avoid the possibility of pain.  Both options are valid for their own reasons.  I guess, for myself, I will always side with love, and all the tears and suffering that go along with it.  I would rather have the chance of experiencing joy than live the rest of my life with regrets.

None of what I have just said is deeply earth-shattering.  Philosophers and theologians have been writing and talking about this subject for centuries.  Tonight, however, I am making a declaration:  I will always choose love, and all the shit that accompanies it. 

I taught a virtual poetry workshop this evening.  A celebration of Walt Whitman's life and work.  It was all about embracing the universe and everything in it--good, bad, beautiful, ugly, and all that exists in between.  That includes pain and suffering.  Grief.  It was a perfect way to end this difficult weekend.  A embrace of life, as only Whitman can embrace it.  I was able to laugh and feel things, difficult things, deeply.  It was a miracle.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.