How many times did I stand
on the shore with you and throw rocks
in this same river simply for the joy
of hearing them splash?
But today, my friend’s daughter
suggested we use sticks
to write invisible wishes on the rocks,
then kiss the stones before we tossed
them in. Perhaps you could guess
what I wished for. Aren’t I always
longing for peace in this world?
But there is so much of me
now you do not know.
Like how today, when I got
behind the car going twenty-seven
miles under the speed limit,
I didn’t call him an idiot.
I just went slower. See?
Things change. Even this woman
who is still throwing rocks
in the same river.
Only now the splash
makes me both laugh and cry.
And now, when I drive
behind a slow, slow person,
I can’t not think
of what wishes
they might write.
Posts Tagged ‘compassion’
Letter to the Dead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, river, self-compassion, softening on July 13, 2024| 10 Comments »
Coming Home the First Time after Our Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, friendship, grief, help, loss, love, receiving on May 22, 2024| 20 Comments »
Someone had taken small rocks and shaped them
into a heart in the center of our drive
so when we arrived, we knew we were not alone.
At the front door, we stepped over
another small heart made of stones
filled with blue petals of larkspur,
golden petals of sunflowers,
the tiny red petals of geranium.
We walked into our home
to find wildflowers in a vase on the counter,
our fridge filled with fruit, soymilk and hummus,
the shelves lined with cans and boxes of tissues.
There were love letters tucked into every room.
The house itself was quiet,
too quiet without the boy who wasn’t there,
but it was not a lonely silence.
Those were the days when I learned
to say okay every time someone offered help.
Can I bring you lavender lotion? Okay.
Can I make you a meal? Okay.
Can I pick up your mail? Okay. Okay.
What a gift to be carried by others,
to learn by heart the sacred bond
between those who are broken
and those who offer their hands
to cradle the ones who are broken.
Years later, those same small stones
still grace our front porch,
though the shape of the heart
has been rearranged many times.
As has mine. I want to remember
how we need each other.
The petals I add never stay.
The love infused here has never gone away.
Into the Questions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, conversation, love, love your enemy, pain, tenderness on November 3, 2023| 13 Comments »
I needed today the soft voice of the man
from Bethlehem saying,
Put yourself in the pain of others.
Not in their shoes, but in their pain.
I needed to see his eyes
when he said it is olive picking season
and the families are too afraid
to go to the orchards.
I needed to hear it is the hardest
his life has ever been,
needed to hear his fear, his anger,
his willingness to wonder
again and again,
What does it mean to love your enemy?
I needed to see the open face
of the man in Israel as he listened,
needed to hear his gentle tone
as he rejected the phrase us vs. them.
Needed to hear the resolve in his voice
as he called for creating an us together.
And because in the arms of terror
these two men find ways to love,
I invite a war into my heart
and imagine myself on both sides,
imagine the ache that fuels the rage.
I don’t have to imagine fear, distrust.
It is in all of us, this war,
not somewhere far away.
It is for all of us to ask in every interface,
How do I love my enemy?
How do we become an us?
Three Prayer Beads after Reading the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, killing, violence, war on October 27, 2023| 16 Comments »
from one gun shot
across the world,
millions more wounded
*
translating “number of casualties”
into daughters, sons,
lovers, friends
*
but what do I do?
I ask the leaves,
lean into the ache as I listen
The Words I Want to Embroider into Her Hospital Gown
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, geese, hospital, illness, mom, nurse, vulnerability on October 20, 2023| 15 Comments »
Thank you for helping her meet
this day, this night.
Though she needs you now
just to take a sip of water,
she was once a volunteer firefighter.
If you were grieving, she would
bake you sweet bread.
If you were struggling,
she would leave a gift at your door
with a kind letter but no name.
Thank you for being the one
who arrives to help this woman
who always rises to help another.
This is the way we guide each other,
like the geese who change leaders
at the apex of the V when one gets tired
or sick. Thank you for flying ahead today.
The distance we must go is long.
Ten-Dollar Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, compassion, feeling it all, grief, opening on September 24, 2023| 12 Comments »
The woman at the farmstand
with the smile in her eyes
sold me a vase with pink dahlias,
pink zinnias, white daisies
and two stems of mint.
Even with all that beauty
waiting for me in the car,
I cried in the grocery store
when the woman I hadn’t seen in years
asked how my son was doing.
When I told her he had chosen
to take his life, she cried, too.
And the stranger who overheard
our conversation cried, too,
and pulled us into her generous arms
and we hugged by the checkout,
laughing and crying in an unlikely
knot of compassion.
I don’t want or need
to be freed from grief—
don’t want to forget the loss
or pretend it didn’t happen.
I want to live in a world
where the broken heart
might meet other broken hearts,
a world where pink dahlias open
in extravagant loveliness,
a world where I, too,
might open, might know beauty,
despite the fact I have been cut.
Sympathetic Resonance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, love, pain, piano, resonance on August 2, 2023| 12 Comments »
All day, I feel the throbbing
of other lives, other pain,
as if I’m a string on the piano
that goes unplayed, and yet
vibrates when the hammer
strikes other strings, and then—
your ache, my ache,
two strings, one song.
Deep Peace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, compassion, love, suffering on July 31, 2023| 6 Comments »
I would carry your ache
if I could. Would carry the throb
and the raw fury, would dress
your wounds with a salve of full moon
and the gold of the tall summer grass.
I would wrap you in the softest song,
and whisper blood-true prayers
so quietly they resemble the sound
of petals falling—something more felt
than understood. And because
I cannot carry your ache, I do
what the helpless do. I love you.
With my own broken open heart,
I love you. With every breath, every blink,
I Iove you. There is a peace
that comes when we deeply
lean into the ache. I wish you
that courage, that peace.
Lone Tree Cemetery, Mid-January
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, compassion, friendship, grief, touch on January 19, 2023| 10 Comments »
for Clea
We can go up there, she said,
nodding to the where the grave marker
was buried beneath feet of snow.
She knew it meant post holing
up over our knees. Uphill.
This, I thought, is true friendship.
So we wallowed through drifts
and laughed as we tripped.
And when we arrived at the place
where the ashes of my boy are buried,
I cried. And she did what the living can do—
she held me. She stood with me there
waist deep in snow and held me,
with her two strong arms, she held me.
Nothing to Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken heart, compassion, friendship, grief, name, silence on October 9, 2022| 2 Comments »
So I light a candle
and though I am hundreds
of miles from you,
I say your name
into the flame—
your name
and the name
of your beloved
who is gone—
these the only
syllables worth saying.
Then I hold silence for you
the way the earth
holds the ocean,
the way a canyon
holds wind,
the way a broken heart
holds another
broken heart.