Blossoming Cherries and Burning Flesh

I should be asleep... getting enough rest to be bright-eyed for tomorrow's sunrise over the cherry blossoms, Inshallah. BUT I just read a response to the question that's been fraying the edges of my soul today, and I needed to process.

Mallie and I call days like today Sadness of the World days (when the weight of minor and mass evils haunt and pierce, and the mundane life-as-usual day seems to have a menacing soundtrack. i.e. My mom didn't get abducted out of our kitchen when I was four. But my friend Spencer's did, and today I couldn't stop thinking about it. About how when we were kids his sister couldn't drive past a cemetery without hiding her face in her shirt. I haven't thought about them in years. But today I couldn't stop grieving for their family.) I decided this morning that a day like this should be called a skin-inside-out day. (I've been reading The Hunger Games trilogy which is tres violent. And I watched an episode of House over dinner which involved a burn victim. And it's true that the slightest brush of story against my skin, on a day like this, makes me wince at the pain another person or a people is faced with.) The demanding refrain of the day, Why are we alive? What is the point of all this? How can I live meaningfully into the awful-earth realities I might otherwise close my eyes and ears to for the sake of bliss? Enter Henri Nouwen.

"The more I think about the human suffering in the world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well in the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims...

I know of few people who have seen as much suffering as the Dalai Lama... Still I know of few people who radiate as much peace and joy.... How is it possible that a man who has been subjected to such persecution is not filled with anger and a desire for revenge? When asked that question the Dalai Lama explains how, in his meditation, he allows all the suffering of his people and their oppressors to enter into the depth of his heart, and there to be transformed into compassion."

While this doesn't solve problems of minor or mass evil, this does offer a strategy for me to use when I feel like I can't bear the burn of a skin-inside-out day. I mean for prayer and meditation to be a more instinctive response, a replacement for the churning of my empathic imagination. And, really, I'm just grateful to have opened a book sitting on at the coffee table tonight that spoke to me as if it had heard my question and didn't want me to go to sleep without an echo from the void. That is grace.

And now I will go to sleep with a cherry blossom scented smile on my lips.