Heartbreak and Wonder

This morning I felt heartbroken.

There is so much these days that can evoke our heartbreak, and I often guard against it, but this morning, my heart having been opened wide to Divine Love through the poem I shared in Mornings with Hafiz: Meditations on Divine Love in the Face of Empire, the day's news — particularly the details of the use of emoji's including the U.S. Flag, a strong white bicep, and fire in war plans leaked through the Signal chat— hit me in all my vulnerability.

How, how, how?!  What utter disdain for life. What callousness. What complete disconnection. How does Love endure this?

The poem we'd just meditated on contained this audacious line:
 

God has a root in each act and creature
That He draws His mysterious
Divine life from.
 

And then the poet paints this picture of God tending that root:
 

The Beloved with His own hands is tending,
Raising like a precious child,
Himself in
You.

I picture this ever hopeful Gardener bent over a plant that seemingly refuses to thrive. Perhaps there is hardly a leaf, or if there is one, it is sickly. Perhaps the soil itself has become toxic. I see the Gardener first loosening the soil, then maybe digging nutrients into the soil around that plant, or painstakingly replacing it entirely, then watering. Maybe he builds a little shield from the wind or breathes onto it, warmly, like Aslan over the stone figures in the Witch's courtyard.

The Gardener refuses to give up on this one, knowing that it is unique among plants. There is not another like it, and the Gardener planted it with a loving vision and is determined to bring about its thriving. There is no length to which this Gardener will not go to be greeted by the springtime innocence and goodness of this one, His own offspring. How the Gardener longs to discover afresh another face of Himself in this world. How he anticipates being delighted once more by what He sees in the mirror of His garden. To abandon this one would be to abandon a part of himself.

I picture the Gardener, after all the tending that can be done has been done, simply holding his hands over, or even rooting his own fingers into the loamy soil around this one, as a sort of vibratory prayer: May your roots feel my roots. May the tendrils of my roots travel through this darkness and sing to the thin and seeking fibers of you. May Love awaken in you, for the benefit of all.

Sometimes in prayer I am like that Gardener, so grounded in Love and generous in my tending.

Other days, I am the plant struggling to thrive, in need of compassionate witness, detox and and penetrating Love energy.

I wonder, Soul Friend, how is it with you today? How are you experiencing Love's energy? Are you receiving it? Being healed and beckoned by it? Are you releasing it? Sending it out, like sunshine, on those you think deserve it and those you think don't? Are you hiding from it? Feeling unworthy? Hoarding it? Fearful of giving God away, as if the world might run out of this precious resource?

I wonder, with the poet,
 

What excitement will renew your body
When we all begin to see
That His heart resides in
Everything?

What excitement could renew our body?

Here in the Northern hemisphere, an irrepressible excitement we know as Spring is (about to be) underway. The body from Whom we come, in Whom we live, to Whom we return is being renewed, caroling with all Her Living, Breaking, Bursting Heart, Can't you see? I reside in EVERYTHING! I am ALIVE!

Maybe Soul Friend, let's give our minds a rest. Maybe let's not try to understand this. Maybe let's allow this to discombobulate and dizzy us. Maybe let's just risk —even briefly— a surrender to the Mystery of it all.

Maybe heartbreak and wonder can live together.


 

Collage above by Sara DeBoer

Poetry from The Gift by Daniel Ladinsky, "A Root in Each Act and Creature"