Tag: Compassion

Categories
Life

Enough

I am only me.

I am only here in this small body, with this small, helpless voice calling out.

I reach out to hold them in pain, while others seek to tear them down.

What are we doing, in the name of the law?

What is the law?

What is punishment at the highest level?

Isn’t it the feelings of heartache, guilt, shame, loss, that arise as the natural consequences of our mistakes? Do we need to drive the pain and the self-hatred into them more by casting them out and throwing away the key?

My heart breaks for those who have lost their way, who have committed an accidental crime for which they must pay a heavy price.

Why can we not hold them deeper?

Why can we not see their pain and feel it so deeply in our bones that rehabilitation is our only wish for them?

I could roar with this anger within.

It is why I wrote the post I deleted last night.

A man who’d been jailed for causing an accident that killed a child. He was a fool. He made an impulsive mistake, driven by ego.

And now the law stands, throwing stones at him until his soul is dead.

His soul is already broken beyond measure.

The child he accidentally killed was his Son.

How can they not see that this man could be their own Son?

How can they not see that we should be holding him through this tragic, tragic day?

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Categories
Life

Unspoken

I’ve done it again.

I’ve pressed delete.

Any words that might hurt another, even if they are my truth, cannot stay here.

And though the post I’ve just deleted feels right from my perspective…there is the potential that it may hurt certain people either close to the story or who have opposing views.

And so it is: delete.

It’s my way.

To care.

So let this truth be for my heart only.

And I will send love into the world, to take its place.

Categories
Life

For The Birds

The birds are home and so am I.

I could say they are noisy, but they are not really noisy. They are only noisy if I think of them in relation to my world.

On their own, they are just who and what they are.

Birds.

Chirping, squawking birds.

I’ve deleted another of my posts (those of you who have been around for a while will know I have done this, from time to time) because the energy of the post didn’t feel like my truth.

It felt like the underside of my world. It felt like the dark parts of me, not my sunshine.

I choose only to shine on this world, when I can help it.

In the post I deleted, I spoke of scammers and manipulation, and where I have felt victimised as a woman in the past. These pains, I know, are real, and they will live within me and walk beside me in everything I do.

But they are not who I am. And the ways I have been victimised are not the people who have hurt me, either.

I see those who have bullied me, taken advantage of me, used or abused me, but I see the pain within them more. They have been small children, hurt by something in life, desperate to cover that pain with a bandaid.

Who am I to blame them when I am the bearer of the very same wounds that scar them?

I will try for the birds, to allow them to be.

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Categories
14 Day Creative Challenge

Sun and Moon and The Dusty Fridge of the Sky

As he spun his web of gold around the evening, Sun smiled on the river children, below. Oh, how they splashed and cackled and loved!

What would Moon think of this beauty, Sun wondered, knowing how his dear and sleepy friend ached for the pain of the humans. This sight would surely glimmer her into a new and cheerful day!

But where was Moon?

Not dangling upon the cherry trees, nor casting a shimmering trail along the rivers’ edge. Tonight, Moon was tidying the evening sky, waiting for the river children to fall tired, and find their sleepy ways.

‘But Moon!’ said Sun, ‘The humans are smiling, look at them! Each of them laughing all along the shore!’

Moon put her quiet finger to her lips. Gently, without changing the calm expression on her face, she pointed to a patch of earth, darkened with gloom.

‘Oh, Moon,’ said Sun, heart broken as he spotted a small child, among the darkness, sad, cold and alone.

‘The others don’t know about him, Sun. They can only see what shines upon their day. This little boy needs me, Sun. I see him. I am ready.’

And with her words of calm and compassion, Moon spun a ball of silvery blue and cast it upon the lone boy of the earth. The boy, who had previously been lost in a puddle of tears, caught sight of Moon’s shine in the pool at his feet.

‘Look, Moon! He’s not crying anymore!’ shouted Sun, like a ball bounding along the open horizon at daybreak.

‘No, Sun. I don’t suppose he is,’ Moon smiled, wiping the last of the cobwebs off the dusty fridge of the sky.

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Categories
Poetry

Stop. Imagine.

Stop.

Imagine.

There is a human here and a human there.

Both are different, vastly so.

Human number one feels okay being bombarded with a box full of emails. He tackles them, one by one, and then he continues on to more busy things. He flies to the top of the work chain. He never rests. Not even when he’s sick. Successful. They say.

(Nobody can figure out why success looks like that.)

Human number two feels overwhelmed by emails and noise, so instead he chooses to paint. Beside the trees. He struggles with focus, but he needs to struggle with focus, because if he focused he’d lose his flow. His authentic flow. The thing within him that changes the lives of others in profoundly beautiful ways.

(Nobody can understand him. Nobody can figure out why he’s broken like that.)

He feels ashamed. He has a choice. He takes medication so he can be more like the first guy. Everybody breathes a sigh of relief.

He slowly dies inside.

And so does everyone around him because

where are all the beautiful things?

Imagine.

Stop.

All toxic cultures die.

Everybody is happy, being the person they were always meant to be.

Everybody.

The end.

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok on Pexels.com
Categories
Poetry

Love and Pizza

I firmly assure you.

Love

is all

there is.

Stop mucking around

and get on with it, world.

The pizza tastes better, there.

Categories
Life

Fully Human

I’ve seen that image, again.

She sits alone (you could not get any more alone) at her husband’s funeral and we all just sit here and shake our heads, because what else is there to do?

I’m speaking of the image of the Queen at prince Philip’s funeral, but you already knew that. You must have. Who could un see that quiet ache, just another handed to us by the raging depths of humanity.

***

I have hidden from life.

Strike that. I am hiding from life.

Because it wasn’t the Queen sitting there alone that day, it was me. I feel the pain that deeply.

It wasn’t someone else’s little boy sitting in the back of a war zone ambulance, parentless; it was mine. That one slices my heart.

I can’t hide from that darkness, though I want to.

I have to see it.

I have to say it: I am torn to shreds.

***

I cried in my husband’s arms the other night.

I mean I really cried, remembering a time in childhood where I was chosen last of all the children in my class to join the netball team.

I cried, at first, for the poor and beautiful little girl whose heart broke that day. But the depth of my tears came from the realisation that that very moment in time made me the person who will always go in to bat for anyone who needs me. That girl will try her very best to lift others, so that no one else has to feel the pain of being unloved, unworthy, unchosen.

Born is the true beauty of aching life.

And born is the paradox. The knowledge that the other needs to feel that very same empathy-birthing pain, in order to truly see. Even though I’d give anything to protect them from it.

***

You see it, don’t you?

This ache, this wide open ache of humanity, has birthed the very best of us. It has grown our hearts and gifted us the ultimate; the chance to hold and love others from the very core of our being.

But, goodness gracious me.

It hurts to be fully human.

Fully seeing, fully being…

everything.

Photo by Nathan Martins on Pexels.com
Categories
Poetry

Unity

Unity is the magic pill.

But unity

does not look like

shaming the broken.

Hear it.

It is this,

my truth,

I speak.

Categories
Poetry

I Have Loved

I only have to give

this love that I have.

I only have to give it,

and cherish the way it feels

to know I have loved.

Categories
Poetry

Sleep

Oh, weary soul.

I barely see you behind those tired eyes.

Let us rest, deeply,

beautifully,

with compassion

for all life has given, harshly.

It is a darling life.

A life to be cherished

with each breath of our aching day.

I sleep, now,

knowing morning matters

only when it greets me.

I sleep, now.

I sleep, now.