CAN WE BE GLAD FOR WHAT DOES NOT HURT?
Photo by Rick Lewis
I used to ask myself how I could be glad about anything when there is so much pain and suffering in the world. In the early 90’s, I visited El Salvador, a country that had suffered more than a decade of brutal civil war, where those seeking justice were continually targeted and killed. Despite this, I was welcomed into a community of music and dancing and celebration. This was the moment I realized how immobilizing it was for me to stay stuck in the pain and suffering when what I needed more than anything was to keep my heart and body open to all the goodness around me. This goodness would be fuel for the road ahead.
It takes practice to notice what is good, especially when we are hurting, and it can save our lives. One client told me that acknowledging five things she was grateful for every day did indeed save her life during a particularly hard stint. It reminded her that life was more than the pain she was currently experiencing. It assured her that she wasn't alone, and that every day amazing things were happening without her having to do anything but pay attention to them.
In case it’s difficult for you to find something to be glad about right now, I'm sharing Marge Piercy's poem, The Art of Blessing The Day.
This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.
This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.
This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.
This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.
This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.
The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.
But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.
Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.
