On Friday as the events were unfolding in Newtown, CT I was sitting alone at the Heartworks House. I did not know about Sandy Hook Elementary School yet, but had a moment of complete overwhelm with the suffering taking place in the world. Looking around the office space at the mixture of inspiring quotes, pictures of bald mothers, thank you notes, deceased children, our "to do" lists for families, articles describing people's illnesses, posters of families in hospitals, war torn countries and military bases, Then there is the "Thank you" art and plaques hanging on the walls from Veterans and families we have reached out to, it all seemed a bit too much. The picture of Charlie looking back at me almost knocked me off my chair. Perhaps Heartworks was doing a lot for people. Perhaps we were not doing enough. Perhaps we are doing what I am constantly preaching about: doing what you can, when you can, for another human being. I didn't know. But what I do know is that the amount of suffering we witness on a daily basis through Heartworks can be overwhelming to say the least.
I sent an email to Maggie Doyne, someone I feel privileged to call a friend. Maggie runs an orphanage in Nepal that she built from the ground up. Her organization "Blink Now" is mind blowing and beautiful. I needed to reach out to someone else who allows herself to be present with suffering. I was having that all too familiar feeling of "What the fuck am I doing??? Why can't I be someone who is at the mall right now? I should be home doing laundry! Why am I constantly surrounding myself with suffering? Why can't I be more light hearted? Why am I so intense?" I was feeling alone. A loser like Katie Myler in grammar school. A weirdo.At the very same time, I was feeling a bit paralyzed by Christmas shopping, holiday meal planning and finding clothes to fit me for a fundraiser we had that night. How can I be thinking that I need a new mascara while sitting in Heartworks House? How do I exist in Bernardsville with so many comforts and yet so much suffering going on in beautiful homes and hot pink J Crew sweaters.
I think I wrote to Maggie because I needed to connect with someone who wakes up everyday and feels the suffering without the comforts (and illusions) I have everyday. She literally sleeps, eats and lives each day with some of the "poorest" children on the face of the Earth. I missed her. I wished that her sweet face was sitting at the table with me having a Diet Coke. As I looked through my contact list for her email I needed to scroll through a lot of names. ALOT of names. I felt ashamed. How could I feel lonely with all these names in my phone? Names of women who run brilliant foundations, others who come to Heartworks House on a daily basis to heal their own lives as well as give to other people. Names of people who love me and tolerate me and have allowed me to have this comfortable, uncomfortable, blessed and full life. I started to feel connected to the world again seeing all these names in my phone. I wrote to Maggie about how much I missed her and that I was blown away by her ability to stay present with the suffering without the comforts of New Jersey. I felt like I must have done something "right" with my life if 2 people I call friends live among the poorest of the world. Without fully realizing it, I was reaching out to her for inspiration. For some clarity on how to live in both the daily, comfortable life of Bernardsville and be present with the suffering of the world at the same time.
When you are present in the suffering of the world. It can be a sense of feeling connected and isolated at the exact same time.
A few minutes after I wrote to Maggie, the texts, calls and emails began to come in about Newtown, CT. At that point the reports were about 18 children being shot at a school. I went into the meditation room and cried and prayed and begged for the presence of God to work through the illusions of the human experience and make itself known at Sandy Elementary School. I prayed for the parents gathering at the school- that they somehow succeed in the almost impossible task of seeing Christ right there before them, in the worst of horror. This is nearly impossible to do in the moments of trauma because the physical and mental cellular reaction is so intense and altering. But I prayed for it anyway. At the same time I pray that the shock they were experiencing, numb their bodies and minds enough to allow things to register at a manageable rate. Even though I know this is all but impossible as well, I prayed for it anyway. All of a sudden all the suffering that I was feeling so "alone" about - felt like the it was being experienced by the world. I knew that if I was crying, so were others. If I was praying, so were others. If I was feeling like the world had flown of its axis, others were feeling the same way. I no longer felt alone at the Heartworks House. I was no longer alone in my questions and contradictions and awe inspiring awareness of the human experience. The world was once again connected by tragedy. The treads of suffering had simply become more public, more apparent and the story on the television was more potent than the Christmas advertisements for a new Lexus with a bow on top of it that seems to be so alluring to people.
The thread of suffering that I was feeling for all of these private families, my own included, as we move into our first Christmas without my father-in-law, as my long time friend Patti starts chemotherapy, as my sister sits bedside as her father-in-law's breath slows down and last rights are read to him. In that moment on Friday, when word of Sandy Hook Elementary school got out, all suffering was the same, just showing up in different forms. Later that night, Eddie and I sat at tables with families living with Autism. The next day I followed a friend down the stairs carrying her 14 year old son on her back because the building is not handicapped accessible and she can't get him downstairs in his wheelchair. I got news that sweet Allie's mother put up a Christmas tree and took it down the next day because she could not handle seeing the ornaments that Allie had made throughout her short life. I began to remember the importance of me staying present with the suffering, and Its not that creative of a reason. It is simply that suffering is a part of the human experience and greatly brought on by our own free will. And if I choose to be distracted from the suffering of the human condition, I will not be affective in any sort of change, or comfort or ease for another human being. As a culture it seems we tend to believe or buy into the idea that the Lexus in the commercial can help us heal something, help us feel less alone, that it can snap us out of our sleep walking, to center and ground us. But it doesn't....Columbine did. September 11th did. Hurricane Katrina did. Hurricane Sandy did. Cancer does. Images of soldiers at war does. Hanging out with Veterans does. Orphans in Nepal and Liberia do too. I wish a new Lexus did. It would be more comfortable. Leather heated seats and that new car smell. But thats not the way it works.
On Friday after the shooting in Newtown I got a call from Darlene. Darlene is a story of bravery for another day. I met Darlene in the Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina. I was volunteering and she had been picked up from her home in a row boat and was at the Convention Center in Houston, TX with nothing but the clothes on her back. She called me during Hurricane Sandy to check on my family. She called me Friday to talk about the suffering she knew the parents in Newtown were experiencing. She talked about her own suffering all those years ago and how we sat there together in Houston, two strangers on a cot, holding hands and praying. Brought together by forces way bigger than ourselves. Darlene understands her own loss and suffering which is why she is dedicating the life she has rebuilt, to serving other people in similar situations.
The thread of suffering that I was feeling for all of these private families, my own included, as we move into our first Christmas without my father-in-law, as my long time friend Patti starts chemotherapy, as my sister sits bedside as her father-in-law's breath slows down and last rights are read to him. In that moment on Friday, when word of Sandy Hook Elementary school got out, all suffering was the same, just showing up in different forms. Later that night, Eddie and I sat at tables with families living with Autism. The next day I followed a friend down the stairs carrying her 14 year old son on her back because the building is not handicapped accessible and she can't get him downstairs in his wheelchair. I got news that sweet Allie's mother put up a Christmas tree and took it down the next day because she could not handle seeing the ornaments that Allie had made throughout her short life. I began to remember the importance of me staying present with the suffering, and Its not that creative of a reason. It is simply that suffering is a part of the human experience and greatly brought on by our own free will. And if I choose to be distracted from the suffering of the human condition, I will not be affective in any sort of change, or comfort or ease for another human being. As a culture it seems we tend to believe or buy into the idea that the Lexus in the commercial can help us heal something, help us feel less alone, that it can snap us out of our sleep walking, to center and ground us. But it doesn't....Columbine did. September 11th did. Hurricane Katrina did. Hurricane Sandy did. Cancer does. Images of soldiers at war does. Hanging out with Veterans does. Orphans in Nepal and Liberia do too. I wish a new Lexus did. It would be more comfortable. Leather heated seats and that new car smell. But thats not the way it works.
On Friday after the shooting in Newtown I got a call from Darlene. Darlene is a story of bravery for another day. I met Darlene in the Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina. I was volunteering and she had been picked up from her home in a row boat and was at the Convention Center in Houston, TX with nothing but the clothes on her back. She called me during Hurricane Sandy to check on my family. She called me Friday to talk about the suffering she knew the parents in Newtown were experiencing. She talked about her own suffering all those years ago and how we sat there together in Houston, two strangers on a cot, holding hands and praying. Brought together by forces way bigger than ourselves. Darlene understands her own loss and suffering which is why she is dedicating the life she has rebuilt, to serving other people in similar situations.
Thank you for listening to me. It is cathartic to write in the middle of the night. Below is my favorite poem. We read it all the time at Heartworks meetings. We will read it Wednesday night at a candle light vigil for Newtown. I feel like it describes all the things I am trying to say about how being present with our own suffering is an avenue to God and each other and the healing of the world.
KINDNESS
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose
things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened
broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all
this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions
of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the
passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel
where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must
see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the
night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must
know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must
speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the
size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness
that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the
world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every
where
like a shadow or a friend.
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