Help for Hurting Hearts

 

Meditations in an Emergency

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

Cameron Awkward-Rich

In times like these, we may be feeling the whole spectrum of human emotion, and are seeking solace. In writing, reading and sharing poetry, we hopefully find a little peace or comfort along the way. Sometimes a poem will put into words exactly what we are feeling, a little help for hurting hearts.

The above poem definitely resonates for me, as do the example poems I include below from my go-to Mary Oliver.

Set your pen free. Whatever comes up for you is what belongs on the page: emergencies, sad, tired hearts, the emotions we feel observing all that is going so wrong in the world. 

Or you might be holding onto hope and faith, the hand on our heart that refuses to give up that dream of a better world, because we know it is possible. I am one of that number, "hand on my stupid heart." I refuse to believe humanity will not rise above this current chapter.

It is hard to view the "box of darkness" we are currently holding as a gift. But maybe it will move the majority of us to rise up in response, to refuse the abdication of the values we hold most dear. We live in hope.

I look forward with interest to what comes up for you this week.

HEAVY

By Mary Oliver

That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surely God

had his hand in this,

as well as friends.

Still, I was bent,

and my laughter,

as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel,

(brave even among lions),

“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it –

books, bricks, grief –

it’s all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,

put it down.”

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

the laughter

that comes, now and again,

out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind, and maybe

also troubled –

roses in the wind,

the sea geese on the steep waves,

a love

to which there is no reply?

THE USES OF SORROW By Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem.)

Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.