To Heal
Listen:
There is still so much time.
Do you not believe?
•
Just look at your own days.
Weaving in and out of power
and despair.
Just look at your hands.
They will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know
about now.
•
Listen:
Not everything will be better,
but all will be well.
Not everything will be heard,
but all will be known.
Not everything will heal,
but one day you’ll be able to answer someone else’s question
and it will be enough.
•
Somehow, to sit with grief will be enough.
•
Listen:
It will never really be enough.
But you will be.
Yesterday, you already are.
Tomorrow is the only question you have to answer, but
Today isn’t even asking.
Do you not believe?
•
Just put your ear to the ground if you want to hear something breathe.
Reach your arms up as you walk past the willow when you’re desperate to touch what is alive.
•
Because listen:
I know.
I know that what you do in the dark
is a clawing out of the grave.
I know you’re just trying to find something as close as you can
to what you remember of God
inside someone else’s body.
•
I know what it’s like to hold your breath
and wait for the water to wake you.
Counting quickly.
Morning breaks, dry.
And it’s taking ages for that creek to rise
so you guess the good Lord just isn’t willing anymore, but
•
Listen:
There is still so much time.
So many names left that you haven’t learned
-all sand and dust and bone, like you-
and everything is hiding there.
All waiting for that water, too.
Do you not believe?
•
Everything.
Do you not believe in everything?
Open your eyes again.
There is still so much time.
So much waiting to be known about now
and you are the only expert there will ever be.
•
Desert-throat thrown open,
screaming at the sky,
unashamed for asking.
Jamie Lee Finch
Mark 1:40-45
This evening, I’m in a real achy, unhealed space, and I am intentionally choosing to stay there, just kind of mired in lament. Which I am learning may be a very strange and excruciatingly uncomfortable decision in comparison to a lot of aspects of Irish culture. But I’m going to use that as an excuse, me not being Irish, to just remain even more potentially foreign. It’s real biblical though: see the minor prophets and the whole book of Lamentations, many Psalms, Job, most of Ecclesiastes - they just sit in sackcloth and ash for a long while. I’m in that mood and that’s this, which is uncomfortable but important.
When I look at the state of the unhealedness around me, I find that grief and an urgent kind of desperate action make the most sense. Which is why I really like this passage and this poem. Sometimes I have trouble with Jesus, with the whole Problem of Evil, but today is not one of those days. To me, Jesus here is pretty cool, this Jesus I find easy to trust. Your man is suffering and asks Jesus for help, and Jesus has compassion - the Greek word here I think is better translated “moved with compassion”, or (σπλαγχνισθεὶς) splanchnistheis, rather than “pity” - and then he immediately acts in response, he immediately heals.
So I think to myself: this is it. This is Jesus. If we want to be like Jesus, then we want to be like this. We look at suffering, we do not look away, we act in response. And, because we aren’t God incarnate with obvious instantaneous healing abilities, we do things the slow and human way. We may take time to act, but we don’t look away, we refuse to move on from that state of heart-wrecked compassion. I think this is really rare. I’ve personally found it to be really rare.
I asked everyone to pray for my friend last week. I find it hard to pray about. I’ve been grieving with her for months, and things just relentlessly keep getting worse. A lot of her friends have just disappeared because her situation makes them feel uncomfortable and depressed. I was talking to her about it today, and it reminded me of this quote from Brené Brown:
“My mom taught us to never look away from people’s pain.
The lesson was simple:
Don’t look away.
Don’t pretend not to see hurt.
Look people in the eye.
Even when their pain is overwhelming.
And when you’re in pain,
find the people who can look you in the eye.
We need to know we’re not alone - especially when we’re hurting.
This lesson is one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
I’ve found wounded people make for the best healers, someone said it to me a few years ago, and it’s stuck at least. Our capacity for empathy increases proportionally to our willingness to be in touch with our own experiences of pain, directly or indirectly. It’s almost impossible to make it through life without experiencing pain and trauma, and it’s impossible to deeply pay attention to the world around us and not witness great pain and trauma.
So I guess my thought here, from this poem and passage is, don’t look away - from within, from yourself, from your own pain, from the pain of others and the right grief that follows. And then I hope we heal, as we can choose to, I hope we make every choice to do so that we possibly can.
