The Struggle

After rain

Trump's grand and vulgar self-absorption is inviting all of us to examine our own selfishness. His ignorance calls us to attend to our own blind spots. The fears that he stokes and the isolation he promotes goad us to be braver, more generous.

James S. Gordon, founder of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine 

The whipsaw of anger and sitting in stillness.

A long time ago Sophie began to seize and I began to resist.

A long time ago I placed the baby in the middle of the bed while she screamed and got into the shower, turned on the water and crouched there under it. The word drown covers both the sound and my life, in those moments.

A long time ago I also rocked my baby and recited a mantra as she screamed for hours and hours. I've written that sentence, juggling those words, over and over for the last two decades. Sometimes I write more than twenty years. A while back I wrote over ten years ago. 

While the baby screamed I recited the words of Thich Naht Hanh over and over, aloud.  Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile.

When I feel most angry I sit with it feeling its flood. Lately, I go to water, swim back and forth, fluid and cutting.

Anger both cuts out the noise and is the noise. It is both distraction and diversion and the means to focus and sharpen.

Sophie and her seizures prepared me for resistance and for anger.

The peace that came was not something to work on, that I worked on but was, rather, imposed.

The story of the angel and Jacob, wrestling on a hill.



A little East of Jordan (145)

A little East of Jordan, 

Evangelists record, 

A Gymnast and an Angel 

Did wrestle long and hard – 

Till morning touching mountain – 

And Jacob, waxing strong, 

The Angel begged permission 

To Breakfast – to return! 

Not so, said cunning Jacob! 

"I will not let thee go 

Except thou bless me" – Stranger! 

The which acceded to – 

Light swung the silver fleeces 

"Peniel" Hills beyond, 

And the bewildered Gymnast 

Found he had worsted God!

Emily Dickinson

Gaugin, The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel), 1888

Secrets and endurance

Jacob, wrestling with the angel, while viewed by Breton maidens
Paul Gauguin 

Sometimes, after Sophie has a big seizure, and my back is aching from holding her and my lip is smarting from where her hand accidentally slapped it while jerking, I pray in a whisper to God. Please take these seizures from her. Make them stop. Give her -- and us -- peace. I don't feel better when I pray, though, because the thought crosses my mind that God might answer the prayer and take her from me. Perhaps that's why I endure.