Gifts

Have you ever put your hand in really hot water and although your pain sensors go into high gear, for a moment or two you can’t tell if the water is intensely hot or intensely cold? Or the flip side, you don’t have gloves or mittens on and you put your hand in a snow bank; all you know is that after a short time it hurts. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to the body which end of the spectrum the feeling is on, hot or cold, the only thing that is important is the pain. I think it’s the same with intense emotions, the kind that take your breath away like a punch in the gut, that seize you in a grip so tight you’re not sure that you will live to see the next moment. I think though that intense experiences, hot and cold, grief and joy, are not on a continuum, a straight line but instead loop together, are joined at the ends creating a circle of 360 degrees. The intensity of grief isn’t that far from the intensity of joy. And the words I’m using, grief and joy, fall short of the emotions I am attempting to describe.

I don’t think I am explaining it well, but that is not entirely my fault. We don’t have the language for these experiences; the words that I am struggling to find are not part of our vocabulary. I am struggling to find words for a language that has no vocabulary. And why is that? Should there be a language for spirit? Or do words, does language, by somehow codifying, explaining, deconstructing, act as a reductionist element? Does explaining take it out of the realm of spirit and move it into the world of descriptive analysis? Yet we continue, don’t we, adding words to our lexicon, attempting to find a way to express the intensity of our emotions, of our experience. And why is it that we do that? Why is it that we need to?

My friend’s daughter, Anna didn’t have words yet when she died, hadn’t had time enough on this earth to learn how to explain her experience through that vehicle. That somehow seems right. Because I think that she was here to remind us of another place, a place that we don’t consciously remember, but with which we are intimately familiar, a place where we don’t need words, a place where language is simply our commonality, our shared experience, our connection to the spirit. Our connection to each other.

All the same, I continue to struggle at my poor attempts to put those things that I am thinking and feeling into words. Why do I bother doing something that is destined to fail? Because it’s what I have to work with. Painters have paint, sculptors have marble, I have words. I think that painters and sculptors may have an easier time of it; their medium perhaps is a truer vehicle. We look at a piece of art, and if it speaks to us, that’s all that matters. Of course we could take an art appreciation class, learn the technical aspects that the artist used to express whatever it is he or she felt compelled to share with others. But putting those feelings into words can actually have the opposite effect; can distance us from our experience and put us back solidly in the world of thinking and analysis.

So we could look at Anna’s life in different ways. We could mistakenly think that she wasn’t around long enough to have an impact. She never got a job, paid taxes, put money into the public coffers, because sometimes it seems that in our society that’s what matters. Or we could say that she gave us a glimpse into that other world, the world of the numinous, the world of spirit, the world in which we don’t struggle for connection with each other. A world where we know that the real reason we are here is to learn that it’s the things that keep us separated from each other that are fictional and what is real, what is true, is our connection.

And this circle that I mentioned, this joining together of intense emotions, that too is a vehicle, and it is the medium that Anna used. Because as special as she is, I strongly suspect that her life would not have allowed for the impact it has had if it wasn’t for its brevity. It takes a lot to get our attention doesn’t it? We humans are a bit slow and easily distractible.

It’s been a tough year for a lot of us; I have many friends who have lost jobs, friends who have lost homes, and even friends who seem to have lost their way. I can’t say that this year has been easy for me either, but in spite of the struggles, in spite of the anxiety, the sheer and utter terror at times, I can’t help but feel such gratitude. At the risk of sending this into Hallmark Card territory, one of the gifts I’ve received is the recognition of how little material possessions matter. I never considered myself to be particularly acquisitive – I don’t have a lot of toys, but living with the financial challenges of the past year, I can see how much less I need than I have. Even how much less I want. At some point these things that I own began feeling less like gifts and more like burdens.

Maybe this year will end up being a blessing to us in the long run, a chance to look through our inventory, individually and collectively, with a critical eye, and decide what we really need, and what we really want surrounding us. I think Anna would like that.