Too Afraid to Cry; Too Shy to Dance

We all carry wounds, wether we talk about them or not. Some are visible to the world – the death of one we love; sickness; divorce. Some are invisible and silent – addiction; miscarriage; abuse; the loss of our own identity; the absence of a reason for living. Many of us carry them alone, and too many of us ignore them. But what if the path to healing is found by entering deeply into the acknowledgement and mourning of these wounds? What if this is what sets us free?

Since he never asked for pity
his friends thought he
was whole. Walking alone he could carry it.

– Robert Bly, My Father’s Wedding

In our happiness-idolizing culture, we don’t like to talk about mourning. We hide pain. We numb it. Some of us slowly bleed. Some of us break. Some of us are just sad and tired. Some of us are angry. Perhaps it’s not a volatile anger like the rage of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Perhaps it is cold and hidden instead – coming out in self-destructive behavior, or manipulation. Some of us withdraw. Some of us keep busy in the details. Some of us build empires. Walking alone, we carry it.

But somebody has to limp it.

Listen to these words, again from Robert Bly’s poem, My Father’s Wedding:

Some men live with a limp they don’t hide,
stagger, or drag a leg.
Their sons often are angry.

Then what? If a man, cautious,
hides his limp,
somebody has to limp it. Things
Do it; the surroundings limp.
House walls get scars,
The car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

Somebody has to limp it. We think our wounds are our own. But they also color the lives of those closest to us. Unhealed, they get passed down to our children. They become family wounds. And eventually, they can even become cultural wounds. J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a witness to generational wounds. We are brushed with the scars of those who came before us, and are often unaware of it. C. W. Ceram writes in Gods, Graves, and Scholars:

“The forces of the past still live on and exert their influence on us, though we may not be consciously aware of this. It is frightening to realize in full depth what it means to be a human being: that is, to realize that we are all embedded in the flux of generations, whose legacy of thought and feeling we irrevocably carry along with us. Most of us never become aware of the importance of this heritage that man alone of all mammals lugs forward through time. And seldom have we any notion how to make the most of our given burden.”

So how do we begin to heal inner wounds? They are not something we can grasp with our hands, and treat with tangible medicine. How do we touch the subconscious?

Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life
and you will call it fate.

– Carl Jung

Naming

It begins with naming. Name the wounds. If you cannot name them, read stories. Contemplate pieces of art. Pay attention to what brings tears to your eyes. Listen to music – truly listening, not doing anything else. Immerse yourself in nature. Watch people – notice the interactions you witness that bring a twist to your heart; record the moments that catch in your throat. Our wounds are communal – we have known loss and grief since the beginning of the world. And we have been finding and sharing language for it ever since.

Naming can only happen in stillness. In solitude. In the slow-down. Listen to Pablo Neruda’s stunning poem, Keeping Silent. To let the atmosphere of the words soak deep into your bones, take the few minutes to listen to it through the experience of this video. It is beautiful.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves…

– Pablo Neruda

Surrendering and Grieving

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. This is our nursery rhyme and playground soundtrack. To walk through life, we are taught to develop a tough skin. As Robert Bly writes in My Father’s Wedding: He already had his bark-like skin then, made rough especially to repel the sympathy he longed for, didn’t need, and wouldn’t accept.

Surrendering means peeling back that tough skin in order to expose the wounds we have just named. This can feel a bit like open heart surgery. It’s vulnerable. This fragile heart feels like it will only get hurt more. But the wounds need to be grieved before healing can happen. This isn’t selfish. Just as your body needs the inner part of a wound to be clean in order to heal, so our emotional wounds need the cleansing of tears at times before healing can happen.

Henri Nouwen – priest, theologian, and writer – understood this surrender to grief. Listen to his passionate plea: Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in you with sobs and cries. Mourn for the silence that exists between you and your spouse. Mourn for the way you were robbed of your innocence. Mourn for the absence of a soft embrace, an intimate friendship, a life-giving sexuality. Mourn for the abuse of your body, your mind, your heart. Mourn for the bitterness of your children, the indifference of your friends, your colleagues’ hardness of heart.

To a world accustomed to toughness, this vulnerability is cringe-worthy. Can we really read that without our eyes hurrying past the words? Sliding past in embarrassment at such naked vulnerability? Surely this is self-pity. We’re taught to play the hell out of the cards we’ve been dealt.

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one. ― Cheryl Strayed

Yes, in good time. But if we haven’t learned about the person holding the cards, how do we play? Our knee-jerk method of playing the cards we’ve been dealt may not be compatible with who we were originally created to be, or with what we were designed to do. Sometimes we choose a path out of retaliation or defiance, and we end up somewhere we don’t belong. And one day, we look around and suddenly everything about our life seems wrong. We are a stranger walking through a world that does not fit us.

The places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I’ve learned;
Those roads were closed off to me
While my back was turned.

-Sara Groves, Painting Pictures of Egypt

Caring for the pain others hold is what brings deeper healing.

Henri Nouwen knew this. In his adage to mourning, he did not stop with mourning our own wounds, but then looked outward, away from the self. He continued by saying this: 

Mourn for those whose hunger for love brought them AIDs, whose desire for freedom brought them to refugee camps, whose hunger for justice brought them to prisons. Cry for the millions who die from lack of food, lack of care, lack of love… Don’t think of this as normal, something to be taken for granted, something to accept… Think of it as the dark force of Evil that has penetrated every human heart, every family, every community, every nation, and keeps you imprisoned. Cry for freedom, for salvation, for redemption. Cry loudly and deeply, and trust that your tears will make your eyes see that the Kingdom is close at hand, yes, at your fingertips!

As we name and surrender and grieve our wounds, something beautiful begins to happen. We find ourselves noticing similar wounds in others. We notice without words being needed, because we recognize the symptoms. We don’t need to be told because we recognize the unspoken messages. And the focus shifts from ourselves. In love and compassion, we reach out. And it is in reaching out, in giving, in sharing what we know, that deeper healing continues to happen within us.

Listen to these words, from the beautiful poem The Invitation:

I want to know if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

~ Oriah, The Invitation

Infragilis et tenera. Unbreakable yet tender.

This heart that finds itself crying for others feels like a strange thing. It feels risky. It feels vulnerable. It’s a newly gentle heart. But it’s the only thing that allows love to truly flow into the world. Dante Alighieri wrote that love and the gentle heart are one, and cannot exist without the other.

A gentle heart is infragilis et tenera, meaning “unbreakable yet tender.” And this heart no longer needs that old tough skin we used to wrap around it. Sometimes, we try to put that old tough skin back over this newly gentle heart again. But wait. We don’t need it. We are learning to live without it. We are learning what it means to be Infragilis et tenera. Let the heart learn this beautiful gift. It allows the third cord of healing to work.

What is the third cord? Joy.

Entering deeply into sorrow is the very thing that enables us to enter deeply into joy. 

This is the final gift. Living without that old tough skin allows joy to deeply infiltrate that slowly-healing heart. Not the happiness that is born of circumstances, but that deep joy that can only be felt in contrast to deep pain. Bryant McGill wrote,  “When you are broken open, you get to discover for the first time what is inside you. Some people never get to see what is inside them – what beauty, what strength, what truth and love.”

When we allow ourselves to be broken open, we’re open to the beauty and meaning of our life. Actions of compassion and love begin to be born, and we learn to be healers. It’s the beautiful symphony of mourning as well as dancing. Because we are no longer afraid to cry, we are no longer too shy to dance, as Henri Nouwen wrote.

As healers, we must face the Evil One while stay­ing safely in the embrace of God. Thus healing is mourning as well as dancing: mourning over losses that the world, captive to the forces of Evil, inflicts on us, and dancing in the house of God where we belong. We tend, however, to stay away from both mourning and dancing: too afraid to cry and too shy to dance.

Like a beautiful portrait.

A life-like portrait is the perfect balance of light and shadow, and so too is a beautiful life. All shadow leaves our faces in the dark – shadow against darker shadow, like the eerie Riders in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Conversely, all light leaves our faces washed out and bloodless. Embracing both light and shadow, crying and dancing, is what kisses our faces with the glorious colors of life. It’s what causes the heart to bleed, yes, but it’s also what makes the sunset sky on a back country road so beautiful in contrast that this same heart nearly bursts its arteries with the thrill of being alive.

This week, as Thanksgiving falls behind me, I am thankful for both light and shadow. For resilience. For hope. For life. And for this beautiful song from Andrea Bocelli.

For the gift of life
For the air we breathe
For the tears we cry
For every melody
For the times we break
Even when we bleed
For the morning sun
I raise my voice to sing
Gloria, Gloria
Gloria, Gloria
Un amore eterno
I’m forever grateful
Gloria, Gloria

Andrea Bocelli, Gloria – the Gift of Life.