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Guest author: Liz Budd Ellmann, MDiv
Sometimes my heart aches. I need to cry, yet I can’t access the tears welling up behind my eyes and surrounding my heart. I know a deep cry would help me connect with God, yet I can’t remember how.
I had one of those experiences during the Parliament of the World’s Religions in December. Presence editorial review panelist, Jack Stuart graciously drove me many miles north of Melbourne, Australia to visit SDI member, Diana Cherry, who survived the devastating bushfires of Black Saturday (February 7, 2009). Scores of people died. Only seven homes remain in Diana’s community where hundreds of families used to live. Diana and her husband Ed told the story of the roaring fire that swallowed up their community. In the aftermath of horrific tragedy, they are--one day at a time--spiritually companioning their devastated community through death into life.
My heart ached when Diana took us to a ridge lookout. We saw charred forests and burnt homes for many kilometres in every direction. Peculiar, rotting smells of death entered my nose and heart. A sooty black picnic table where friends once shared laughter entered my sight and soul. An uneasy silence entered my ears and hung in the air where brilliantly colored parrots and bright-white cockatoos normally would be heard squawking in the treetops.
“Forgive us for we know not what we do.”
I prayed to the trees with my broken heart. I tried to pray for the arsonist who ignited the fires, and quickly realized I was too sad and in shock to pray for the perpetrator. How could someone do this to the helpless neighbors of Diana and Ed, including the powerless trees, wombats, wallabies, koalas, and lyrebirds that they dearly love? Inaccessible tears pooled behind my eyes.
As we left the ridge, I noticed stringy, peeling bark in a grove of scorched gum trees. Grateful to be with fellow spiritual companions, we paused together to watch the long strands of hanging bark gently blow in the wind . The trees were shedding their layers of protection, trusting that new bark would grow. Their compassion was palpable, each tree being present to the other, teaching me to trust the love in heartache and loss, bringing my tears closer to the surface.
Dead bark quietly and tenderly wafted in the wind, reminding me of Tibetan prayer flags, sending blessings on the breeze. In that moment, my heart opened to the love, resilience, and grace of the gum trees, reconnecting me to the cycle of life. Together we listened to the prayers of the trees, and the trees listened to our prayers, dissolving in the wind, filling all spaces with an eternal love found in the gift of communal heartache and tears.
How do you listen with compassion to the heartache and gift of tears of your own life and the lives of people you accompany in spiritual direction?
Especially after the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, how are you caring for your sensitive heart and journeying with others who may be struggling to make meaning in the aftershocks of heart-wrenching destruction?
In the comments section on the blog, please share your thoughts.
Top photo:Diana Cherry and Presence journal editorial review panelist, Jack Stuart.
Middle photo: Scorched gum trees.
Bottom photo: Diana and Ed Cherry.
Spiritual Directors International is educating the public about listening with compassion, around the world and across traditions. Check out the blog, Facebook, or Twitter to see where.
02/01,2010, at 22:21
At the wake of the Haiti disaster I was quietly listening and my heart sobbing over a little personal pain I was going through in the midst of the ministry of spiritual accompaniment I was doing a little more than a month. I asked the Lord, why this pain and I have not yet enjoyed the Christmas Season that has come to an end. I felt myself opening wider the door of my heart to the great pains of the world, HAITI. In spirit I connected with the pains of the people who were so deprived of human comfort and basic human needs. Until now while I am typing this my tears have not stopped falling. But I know my heart was opened to greater pain in the world today!
02/02,2010, at 04:02
Thank you very much for a very touching sharing. At the end of the passage, hope is instilled. I live in Hong Kong. A five stories apartment was collapsed few days ago in ToKwaWan, West Kowloon, Hong Kong. Four persons died and 2 serious wounded.It is suspected that the 55-year-old block had been loaded with illegal structures and its balconies. It is something that the whole community feel sad and frustrated. I wish that people in Hong Kong will experience hope when more concern for the needy will be taken care of.
02/02,2010, at 04:35
Remembering Jesus' Parable of the Tares & Wheat We refuse to be mesmerised by the dark evidence of the physical senses and do not panic We focus on the evidence of Love in action and see this is the light of Truth God sees We rejoice at the uncontaminated vigorous wheat and store only wheat into our consciousness and welcome this opportunity to bear witness to the pure Christ in everyone
02/02,2010, at 08:31
One year I arrived at church about an hour early for the Maundy Thursday evening service. I sat stock-still in the semi-darkness, not defining the time in any way. And up, up, up welled grief, huge grief, grief bigger than any person, grief of women in Iraq losing their children and husbands, who were not even being counted as 'collateral damage'; grief of the multi-colored gazillions of women who suffer rape from angry men, their own or those warring against their own; grief from alcoholics and addicts who know in a moment of lucidity how multi-directionally destructive is their habit; grief of parents and siblings and spouses and children of all the soldiers in the world; unconscious grief of all of us for, in the words of a confession written by my own Episcopal denomination "all the evil we have done, and all done on our behalf'. Rivers flowed down my cheeks. And there was, simultaneously, a sense of being blessed for the connection with all grieving humanity. It flowed back in time through the Black Death and all we ( the billions of us who've lived on this little blue dot in space) have suffered. We cannot make it go away. We can open our hearts. We can live so that we at least consciously allow the suffering to move us. We can respond as moved by the Holy One who holds it all in that compassionate heart, in ways our gifts and time and imagination and hope allow. For those in the Christian tradition, the garden of Gethsemane allows us to watch one hour and participate in Jesus' work for all of us. I thank you Liz for the question. I thank you Holy One for the answer that welled up immediately. I thank you others in this community of SDI, known and unknown, for the work you do to create an architecture of safe space for healing. It is NOT nothing, even in the face of the immensity of the suffering. As we say at the end of our service: Go in peace to love and serve....
02/02,2010, at 11:48
Dealing with the aftermath of Haiti and after reading your narrative, I recalled listening to someone who has been very hurt by another. I asked the person to pray, just as you prayed, "Father, forgive them, they didn't know what they were doing." Your narrative brought a confirmation of my own sense of praying with someone for forgiveness, for the perpetrator of such a dark deed. Thank you!
02/02,2010, at 13:30
I hesitate to submit this comment for fear of putting a smiley face on such a stark and needless tragedy. The mountains above our home in Tucson, AZ suffered a devastating wildfire that destroyed miles of forest and the quaint village of Summerhaven. The landscape was much like that of the picture above. We were told it would take a hundred years to reforest. However, even in five short years, you see newness of life everywhere. Though we "sow in tears, there is joy in the morning." For me, heartache and heartbreak seem inconsolable. My mustard seed of hope believes something good can come from all of this.
02/02,2010, at 18:03
As others have shared, caring for my heart has meant placing it in the hands of the Trinity, for who can stand the immensity of this pain if we faced it fully. We need the blessings of a pure heart - one united to God. Journeying with others then opens me to be touched, wounded, by that darkness and cry out to God, "What is your will?" Forgiveness is the answer. But we do not go on our own. I pray that we, as you have here, do not fear to invite others the way God has shown us.