Many years ago, the teacher of my teacher tapped into my being and my world. Our western language would call it bilocation, but as I have said a thousand times words limit us and some experiences and teachings cannot be translated into words. We understand Truth in the soul’s realm. Intellect often muddies matters. This person saw and shared many things, but there was one thing shared I did not understand. He said my heart was enlarged, too big for the space it inhabited. I went to the physical and worried was it a health related “seeing.” Then knowing my physical heart was fine I let it go. I hadn’t thought about it after that. I learned long ago that understanding and knowing happen in their own time and the mind cannot comprehend what the soul has not embraced. Today, in prayer, the message returned.
In the last two weeks, five people who I care for deeply have experienced profound and life altering losses. Two lost a child, three lost a beloved parent and then Friday, our collective, exhaustive mourning began with the horrific murder of another black man, Tyre Nichols; a young man who was five months younger than my brown skinned son. The skin of my heart has been peeled back through empathic mourning and finally, maybe, I am getting it. Although understanding and integrating are two different forms of wisdom. I can only try.
Earlier this week weeping like a child in front of a friend who happens to be a co-worker, I told her of the intense heart pain I was experiencing. I told her how I had literally cried myself to sleep several nights in a row. It has been decades since I cried myself to sleep like to an inconsolable child. I told my friend my heart was breaking for all their pain. I belittled myself saying, “I’m too tender hearted. I need thicker skin. I need to be stronger, tougher, and more resilient.” My friend did something unexpected and in her moment of vulnerability I received a beautiful gift of insight. My friend started weeping, big glistening tears streamed down her face. She emphatically said, “NO, NO, NO, you cannot lose your tenderness. It is your connection, your holiness, your beauty and how you know the things you know.” Although her pain was tangible, her voice was strong, powerful, and other worldly. In that moment I knew she was channeling the Divine. My declaration of needing to be something else clearly bothered her because she sent me an email about the beauty of remaining tender hearted and she sent a text making sure I saw the email. I am stubborn, but Spirit told me I needed to listen, and I needed to surrender to the wisdom she channeled.
This morning in my prayers, Creator took me back to 2002, to a moment in my life where grief literally swallowed me whole. I remember falling into an abyss, descending into a pit of darkness. I left my body and was floating above myself; watching myself curled in a fetal position, laying on the ground howling in primal pain. In that blackness I heard a voice I know was God. It said, ‘This grief is a gift. This grief represents your capacity to love and how many people go through life and never get to experience this kind of love.’ Instantly I was slammed back into the raw fury of pain, but I surrendered to it because I knew “it” was another face of love. I knew “it” was a gift and I allowed myself to grieve.
Somewhere along the years I clearly forgot God’s beautiful teaching but, Love is like water, and it carves away at the stony shields we foolishly try to cover our hearts with. I recently read a quote by Susan Griffin, “At the center of all my sorrows, I have felt a presence that was not mine alone.” To be truly human, to be brave in this world we must surrender to our individual and collective hearts. I tell people all the time God speaks to us through our heart, and it is our truest voice and yet, here I was wanting to close it down because I was feeling the pain of my friends and the world. I wanted to shut it down because I felt childlike and out of control crying myself to sleep. I wanted to shut it down because I wanted to be in control when in truth the only control, we have is in our ability to surrender to the now. Living in our heart’s space is living in the center of God, Creator, Unconditional Love. It is Divinity, Grace, and Mercy.
We are brave because if we choose to love then we must love in a state of understanding impermanence. We love knowing eventually the person, place, experience, world will end in this physical realm we inhabit . . . temporarily. At the core of our souls, we know grief will come down and cover us like a murder of crows can cloak the bluest sky in a black winged shroud of lamentation. We are brave because grief carries us to another realm, a dimension of holy where we are gifted the ability grow softer and surrender to what is truly sacred – to Love. Grief forces us to remember not only pain, but more importantly it beckons us to remember, to carry and create memories and moments of Love. Grief keeps us to connected to every thing that matters. Equally important, our grief, our tears water the courageous seeds healing and change.
I know I am both alone and connected to all there is. I know our world is suffering a collective pain, collective loss – for in each of us is the other. Millions of stories of beauty and sorrow swirl in our collective DNA. I AM whole yet broken. I AM tender hearted, and the skin of my huge heart is paper thin, but I think I finally understand this is a gift. To be broken and rise again bloodied and scarred . . . to know pain and still be willing to risk my fragile heart to love another . . . to be present with death and birth and know there is beautiful holiness in both. Tenderness is the brave, authentic face of Divinity, Grace, Mercy and Love and I know the world needs more of this. I know I need more of this too.
“Embrace your grief, for it is there your soul will grow.” (Jung)
Grief is growth. My heart is enlarged, too big for the space it inhabits. I know part of my soul’s agreement in this lifetime is to hold space for the wounded, to weep for those who can’t weep, to carry the stories of birth and death and to honor grief and love equally because they interwoven and connected in the same way we are each a drop of water in the same ocean.
I send each of you so much love.
Art by: Ana Vic