Strong at the Broken Places

The world breaks  everyone, and afterward
      many are strong at the broken places.
                      ~ Ernest Hemingway

There are times when, due to some circumstance or series of events -- often involving a deep loss of some kind -- we get broken open. Something within us, or something in our lives that we considered 'unbreakable' or 'all-important' comes crashing down or splitting apart, and we find ourself living with the uncertainty of broken places.

Just looking at the headlines -- if we're not already hearing the same thing from friends, family members, clients, readers, etc. -- we see that loss and brokenness is a common theme these days.

I understand this deeply now, having been through a cycle of 7 years which featured losses which seemed, prior to this time (and even sometimes during it), unimaginable, from the loss of several immediate family members, including my father and grandmother, to the loss of several beloved cats who were dear family members and long-time companions; to business and financial losses due to outside economic forces and personal and family wellness crises; the end of a long marriage; and the loss of my community and proximity to dear friends when I was called East from San Francisco to help with my father's hospice care and then remain in closer proximity to family for awhile.

All of this unmade me -- a common term in spiritual traditions that still include the Wisdom of navigating the Dark Night and the cycle of Death that is part of Life. Such deep change breaks open the Mask, the false identity, the 'who you thought you were (supposed to be)'. It breaks open how you thought things were supposed to be, and challenges you to your core to remember.

Like our kindreds in other places in the world, we in our Western, American culture, experience loss regularly, and our ancestors knew it well. Yet, despite that experience and knowing, we don't have a refuge for authentically, openly experience loss and grief in a culture that shuns and shies away from it, that treats it as a 'failure' because our collective awareness has traveled so far from the wisdom of Life-Death-and-Renewal that our ancestors knew so well.

And so many people suffer losses in isolation, which magnifies the grief because it's a full-on experience of the loss of connection that resides beneath the losses that take place on the surface of our lives.

Now, with so much that seemed 'sure' threatened, along with the natural cycles of life and death of those among us, there is a call to remember the Wisdom that can help us navigate this 'underworld' more gracefully and with an awareness of connection and the ongoing Nature of Life.

This is how we grow strong in our broken places, and how we come to see that which challenges our certainty, and that which undoes and unmakes what is familiar to us, is also the very thing that reveals the place where new life grows. We meet that which is truly 'beyond death', while honoring what it living and what has passed out of our familiar, day-to-day life.

The broken places are rich and fertile, where our lives -- inward or outward -- may have become stale and lifeless in some way. We're cracked open to allow for new, fresh life.

Leonard Cohen, in his song "Anthem", writes:

Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.

If we allow the broken-open places, without scurrying to try to fill them in or hide them, we not only allow ourselves to experience fully what has passed -- what we've lost -- but we also allow the Light to shine in and illuminate all that is there, Heaven around us, all of the time. And in our deep-feeling and deep-experiencing of loss, and the full acknowledging and honor of what's passed, we open ourselves to deeper Joy and a deeper ability to connect, reach out, in a joyful compassion and intimacy.

Blessings on the Way,
Jamie