Embracing
the Questions
“Great
Mystery that is life, we ask to be blessed by the conscious knowing
that fuels our spirit and makes us live. May we embrace that which we
do not understand as well. May we approach all with reverence and
know that the answers will come in their own time. May we relish in
it and find peace despite the absence of clarity and somehow be
comforted by the experience of the mystery that is life itself.”
Laura
Berman Fortgang (The Little Book on Meaning)
It
was Rainer Maria Rilke who advised, “have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart..try to love the questions themselves as
though they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign
language.” There are so many more questions than answers in one
lifetime that if we don't learn to embrace them, we'll live with a
great deal of frustration. Always life offers up new experiences and
new questions; so much so that many days we walk within a cloud of
unknowing as thick as a New England fog-bank.
Today,
I will go to a Police Precinct with my son to file an official report
and go over evidence collected at a crime scene. On Monday night, as
my son was leaving a theater, he was assaulted by and group of young
men and beaten with fists and a tire iron. He was left tied in the
back of his car badly battered. When he came to, he managed to get
himself loose and called 911, me, and his brother. We all converged
on the scene a little before mid-night. After spending a couple of
hours with the paramedics and police, I took him to the Emergency
Room and spent the rest of the night waiting while he was put through
a battery of examinations. He's bruised black and blue and has a concussion,
but no broken bones, no internal injuries, no bleeding inside his
head. He feels lucky to be alive. I feel numb. And I have a million
questions.
All
this is new to me. You'd think at my stage of life, I would have
experienced that dreaded phone call in the night, that quaking of the
legs that barely lets you stand on your feet, that anxious vigil in
an unnaturally bright ER examining room, but I haven't. Nor have I
gone to a Police station to witness an official statement. I don't
know what to expect.
Life
will always serve up experiences that are untried, with new
unanswered questions. Not all of them will be holy or pleasant. When
we allow ourselves to go into them, not as something to be avoided at
all cost, but as one more encounter with the Mystery, they are less
terrifying. My son is going to be all right and for that I am
grateful.
In
the spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment