Last year in response to our regional flooding, I wrote a poem titled, There is No Way Except the Way.
This blog is The Sequel to the poetic series, There is No Way, prompted and provoked by the foreboding visitation of Coronavirus on our planet.
Inner Work…though it is a deeply personal matter, it is not necessarily a private matter: inner work can be helped along in community. Indeed, doing inner work together is a vital counterpoint to doing it alone. Left to our own devices, we may delude ourselves in ways that others can help correct. But how a community offers such help is a critical question. We are surrounded by communities based on the practice of “setting each other straight” – an ultimately totalitarian practice bound to drive the shy soul into hiding.
~Parker Palmer
Our family story hinges on the principle from Genesis 50:20. “Even though the enemy planned evil against us, God planned good to come of it.”
This morning I awakened with the sunlight beaming through our window, I immediately became aware of everyone who is suffering.
In our area of Nebraska, the flood waters are impinging into personal lives with a fury. It will be the end of a particular way of life for those who have been devastated by the raging and destructive waters. The earth is groaning through its convulsive land shifts as levees burst under pressure and the rain representing how the sky is weeping in deep sorrow for all of the suffering in our area and our world at large.
Then, more personally there are those who are undergoing hidden distress in a way that is not obvious to others. My sister-in-law is grieving the unforeseen loss of her grandson, the young man she raised for 18 years. Another, a confidante, who has been impacted by injustice through the legal system. Another, business connection which has been patiently nursing her husband back to health for several years. The suffering is relentless, and no one is immune. I could continue with “another and another,” as I am a mental health therapist by vocation and an empath by design. I bear with those who are suffering. As I consider the suffering, a spontaneous poem emerged this morning, and I want to share it with you:
(Listen to Crystal narrate her poem. 1:28)
