Wounds, Scars and Warrior Marks - by Lucky

There I was, sitting with a group of people who were of mostly as old, or older, than I was. I was delighted to be among them. We were just completing a kind of introduction process that entailed each person saying their name and then a little bit about what gives their lives meaning. I had been expecting the process to be long and tedious, full of reports, but it turned into something else, a moment of depth, of heart, of struggles engaged in for us all. I came to the discovery that the room was populated by people who were really living, really experiencing this compelling mystery we call life. I said, and I experienced it vividly, I was sitting in a true circle of elders.

There are many things that touched me as I felt the people around me. I could feel the creativity, compassion, commitment, humor, passion and wisdom of those I heard, that delighted me, and lit me up with expectancy, but what moved me the most, what made this train wreck feel at home, was how much suffering had carved wisdom into us. This piece of writing comes out of the experience, verified in the circle, that wounds, no matter how painful and debilitating, are sacred, gifts of unimaginable fury, beauty and spiritual  potency.

What I found amazing is, that this group knows that. Between deaths of loved ones, losses to the ravages of cancer, heart disease, stroke, or financial uncertainty, blossomed the most incredible appreciation for life, other humans and especially the young ones coming along. There was much to feel lucky about, much to wonder about, much to feel awed by. If I had been truly free, old enough to be inappropriate, I would have done the most appropriate thing. I would have, now I wish I had, cried. My tears would have signified an acceptance of what I have tried so hard to accept, that human suffering has a place, and that place is in the wizened heart.

Wounds open and sensitize us. Scars remind us. Warrior marks embolden us, they confirm that hurting is part of the way, and that going forward means hurting purposely. This kind of wisdom can only be found through running the gauntlet (an old Native American rite of passage for warriors), but being amongst a circle of people who know about this rite of passage, even obliquely, because they have endured it, is deeply sustaining. Hurt becomes a strange and compelling miracle, a privileged brokenness.

I don’t know that I understand the relationship between suffering and wisdom. Maybe I’ll learn more about this unbearable miracle in that circle. I just know there is one, and that I want to embrace it, so I can be as compassionate and as wise as these times need me to be.  I have my own wounds, scars, and warrior marks, I haven’t come to terms with them all, now I know, in a way I didn’t know before, that each is a fountain, not only of brokenness and shame, but of dignity and heart wisdom. If I gain nothing else, and I expect more surprises to come, the elder circle has touched me in a place tender and dark, and awakened a sleeping chunk of my soul.

All of this thought about the miracles associated with brokenness reminds me of a poem I collected several years ago from a woman who lived on the street.

There is a brokenness

            out of which comes the unbroken,

A shatteredness

 out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow

            beyond all grief which leads to joy

And a fragility

            out of which depth emerges strength.

There is a hollow space

Too vast for words

Through which we pass with each loss,

Out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound

Whose serrated edges cut the heart

As we break open

To the place inside which is unbreakable

And whole.

                                                            Rashani, 1992

I’m savvy enough to know that everyone doesn’t get to the wholing miracle that underlies wounds, some people just end-up bitter, feeling like their lives have been interrupted by tragedy, feeling like something is wrong. I know this place. I live there sometimes too. But, for this moment, in this circle of elders I knew it didn’t have to be only this way. Being wounded, scarred, and carrying warrior marks is a sign of living, loving and caring, and being intact, enough, to hurt about it all. Given the choice, I would rather carry the marks of life.

l/d

Diminishment- by Lucky

As you may remember I’ve been blessed to be part of an elder’s circle that has been meeting monthly for about 5 months now. I have learned a lot and been touched by many things. At the moment, I am wrestling with something that seems to be counter-intuitive, paradoxical and miraculous. Something that I have experienced personally, and something that it turns out is a part of the human experience. I’m talking about diminishment.

When the elder circle first started I used to joke that chronologically I was a baby elder, but experientially I was precocious. I was of course referring to my age (62), my stroke, and the losses that attended it. I have always been somewhat amazed (and a little too proud of) the fact that the stroke, and its aftermath, both reduced and enlarged me. By listening to the experiences of others, elder’s who had losses, of loved one’s, health, economic stability, or other vital connections, or hearing about the losing of faculties, I discovered that these diminishments set up a kind of awakening to what it means to be human.

This reality, that living seems to diminish, and thereby, grow us, is fascinating to me, and seems to me not widely known. Ageing is transformed, if it isn’t just about loss, but also is about gain. The idea that elders might contain wisdom has been around for a long time. There haven’t been too many elders, until recently, to say what that particular wisdom is, but now something of elder wisdom is starting to emerge.

One facet is that the losses of life, put us (human beings) into another world, where the fragility of being human is the strength that binds us to each other and life. That is an amazing reversal, one that you need a certain kind of life experience to know. Luckily, and I do mean luckily, ageing makes that realization possible, maybe even necessary. I think that is a kind of miracle. In an age where there is so little emphasis upon human resilience, who among us would ever believe that the old folks amongst us, the one’s who had been through so much, would have important experiences that could shed light on our capabilities.

Diminishment isn’t just a tragedy. Sure, no one likes to see a young person (or anyone) crippled by disease, war, malnutrition, or accident. The sense of potential wasted, and of loss and suffering, is palpable. But, and here is where elder wisdom is handy, that isn’t the end of the story. Loss, which is painful, could mean gain, for the individual, and for the community, and that is another kind of pain, a miraculous pain born of wonder and a realization of human fragility.

Diminishment isn’t something you look forward to. No wonder elders are so often isolated. It isn’t the kind of miracle anyone wants to befall them. Yet, when it does, it helps to have a few people around who know what a gift it can be. Elders, by and large, are those people. They know loss intimately. They know that a certain end is coming. They have been shaved down to meet it, and in being shaved down, they know

something about what is really important about human life.

Diminishment, despite its bad rep, is a doorway, a kind of opening that can introduce us to our own deeper humanity. At a core level, which hardship and diminishment make clear, we are social animals, beings that thrive as part of each other. Losing individual faculties is hard, I know, but all that harder if one is isolated. If one has a sense of being part of something bigger, part of a larger community, then diminishment, means turning to that something larger for what is needed. This turning is the beginning of a new life, the reliance on a miracle that is already in place.

This is a part of what elder’s know, a part of what I am learning, and the thing that diminishment brings. Death, the big diminishment, awaits us all, facing it is easier, though never certain, when you know diminishment can be a gain, and is part of the circle of life.

l/d