A Path of Life

[For those of you new to this blog I have been choosing a WORD each month of 2013

 ~~ a word that I attempt to live throughout the month~~

Although I have already chosen my new word for May, 

I am not quite finished with April's word, grief]

I love the picture above.  For me, it is a path of Holy Mystery~~a path of LIFE!  It is a kind of icon of joy and sorrow, light and darkness, hope and despair, love and grief.  Perhaps I am being too dualistic!  I don't really know if everything has an opposite. I thought a long time about grief.  I don't know what its opposite would be.  I believe all of these gifts (that don't always feel like gifts) will eventually be integrated into our lives.  Maybe it is all part of the Paschal Mystery which many Christians will relate to.  We don't exactly get rid of grief, sorrow, loneliness, despair, darkness.  They will always be part of the mystery of our lives.  And as I mentioned in my last post, they have every right to be a guest at our table.  Hopefully, some kind of integration will eventually take place in our lives and then we will become more at ease with this unwanted guest.  Remember, "Joy and sorrow are sisters; they live in the same house." 

Continued reflections from my book, A Tree Full of Angels, 

 "There's nothing like sorrow to get your attention.  It is almost as though sorrow pulls presence out of you. In the midst of sorrow there's nothing to do but be there and celebrate the hurt.  We celebrate the hurt through holy screams.  Holy screams come from the heart.  They are screams that people often, in their ignorance, try to smother.  Don't let them take your screams away too early.  Holy resignation comes only after holy screams.  Don't let them tell you it's God's will, unless they are saying that life is God's will and freedom is God's will, and you are God's will.  Much of the news you see on television each evening is not God's will.  It is the will of the human race.  It is too comfortable to blame it on God.  

Why blame the One who wills nothing for you except that you be divinized.

We are absent from life far too much.  Sorrow (and grief) make it impossible for us to be absent, and so, blesses us with real presence.  In the midst of our sorrows, distractions fall away, and we are there, raw and open, often confused, always vulnerable, little and great.  In sorrow we are nudged to our depths.  I do not claim to understand the mystery of suffering, but I often meet people who have walked through great sorrow; they seem to wear the face of God.  These are the people at whose feet I yearn to sit.

-taken from A TREE FULL OF ANGELS: seeing the holy in the ordinary - page 35

May you find comfort as you walk the Path of Life.