Seeing the Hospital

I had three appointments in the hospital today. I arrived at 9:30am and left about 2pm. So I had plenty of time to observe, chat, and listen. I saw men and women in wheelchairs, people getting flu vaccinations, folks in waiting rooms, doctors in blue uniforms, servers in the canteen, clerks in the gift shop, baristas making lattes, and a host of individuals either limping, coughing, sneezing, shuffling papers, pushing carts, or doing something that was sickly or taking care of the sickly. It was a community—a hospital community, a community designed for the purpose of healing frail and ailing bodies.

This caused me to think about this broken world. I live in a world where people suffer. People are sick. People are fragile. No one escapes the inevitable illnesses that plague humankind. We have earaches and sore throats, coughs and sneezes, broken bones, loss of hearing and eyesight, diabetes, heart failure, and cancer. As a result, we have places of healing. These places are metaphors for a larger reality—a spiritual reality.

I am a spiritually broken person. No matter how much I want to be whole, perfect, complete, it comes back to brokenness of soul. Like Paul of the New Testament, I find that my ideas of becoming like Christ are thwarted by inner urges that undermine my good intentions. I want to do right, but I end up behaving in ways less than desirable. I sabotage myself. I need a place of spiritual healing and a healer.

The place of healing is an inner sanctuary. It is that place where the Divine One lives in me. That One is the Healer. I have within a sacred healing space where my soul is transformed by the One Who Knows How to Heal. But like those in the hospital, I must go to that place and submit myself to the healing process. And like any physical healing, there is a crisis point, a pain threshold that must be visited in the process. I must be willing to suffer through the sickness and do what is necessary for my soul to be well. I have to take what the Healer prescribes no matter how bad it might it taste in my spiritual mouth.

And so I do it for my own soul care.

Day twelve of the Thirty Days of Seeing

The Garden: Weedy Suffering

The thing about a garden is that the gardener must never allow the weeds to overcome. If that happens, the result is pain. Pain in the back from all the bending, pain in the knuckles from all the grabbing, pain in the elbows from all the pulling, pain in the head from too much heat and dust and sun. Yeah, when weeds take over, the gardener suffers.

It seems that this is a good metaphor for life. Too many weedy things rise up and try to conquer. If they are not checked, they multiply. And suffering comes with them. This is not the kind of suffering that comes from the injustice exacted by an oppressor. Rather, it is a kind of suffering that comes from having to remove those weeds.

Pulling weeds from one’s life is like pulling weeds from the garden soil. The roots must come with the top of the plant; otherwise, it is likely to regrow. And some weeds’ roots are deep and notoriously stubborn. Those weeds are so entrenched that they do not let go easily. These are the ones that cause the most suffering.

Why? Because they require the most persistent work to dig them out for good. Those who would tend the garden of their hearts must be tough, deliberate, and wise. Wisdom identifies those weeds that shade the heart, crowd the fruit, and invite the pests. Deliberation identifies the best way to tackle the weed’s removal. And toughness gets the job done no matter how difficult the task.

This is the way of the garden life. Weeding . . . weeding . . . weeding.

Unfixable Pain

Yesterday, I attended a seminar on pain and suffering. Its topic was Total Pain. Total pain includes physical, emotional/mental, social, and spiritual. Within these four areas, there is “fixable” pain such as the mending of broken bones or the relieving of physical pain, and there is “unfixable” pain such as comes with the grief that follows loss.

This particular seminar was designed with caregivers in mind, so most of the material presented was to help caregivers realize ways to help their patients cope with “unfixable” pain. As a spiritual director, this is my “supposed” field of expertise. I spent three years learning how not to fix people. Yet, there is some small part of me that wants to be able to do that very thing, to solve people’s problems and make them “better.”

This presupposes that I know what a person needs to be “fixed” and that I know what “better” is for them. As I have reflected on this “fixing” habit, I have to admit that I don’t want to acknowledge that I have “unfixable” pain in my own life. If I can focus on fixing another’s pain then I can avoid my own. I can ignore it. I am trying to diminish my own pain by solving another’s. It is a delusional practice.

I was reminded in this seminar that the healing of “unfixable” pain requires one to be present to it, completely and fully. Moving in to it. This means that I must move in to my own pain and be present to it, and the other must do the same.  As a spiritual director, I invite my directees into their pain and suffering, to experience it, and be present to it. I can do this because of my own pain and suffering. We are both wounded and healing. We are both wounded healers. 

Art: http://www.centerforhealingandhope.com/ART_1.html