Does the hard LB so you don't have to

this is one of the rare nights when i sit down with my laptop and make a decision not to share... but for the second night in a row ulrich schnauss weaves his magic around me...soothes me... brings calm to the air...

there are some things that you just can't write about in a public realm...

such as the pain of others, so close it strikes the heart hard and clenches the gut... to know that sometimes there is nothing you can do to take away that pain but only offer some glimmer of something like comfort in constancy of care, to trust that just maybe it will be understood and received, and to offer nothing more than presence to the pain as to the joy...there is no magic wand to heal our hurts...but the salve of friendship can sometimes be just enough to keep us going into another day...

we offer symbolic gifts...little monuments to act as reminders... markers of the things of significance... pieces of ourselves and our words in forms that can be seen and heard and held... such gifts are not measured by monetary value but by their intention, their specificity... their peculiarity to the moment... their embodiment of this could only be for you...

we cannot take away the pain of another... believe me, i tried, and in the process forgot, no, neglected to acknowledge that my own pain even mattered, so that i nearly lost myself past the point of no return...we can only sojourn on...
i'll walk with you at your pace and hope that tomorrow you might walk at mine, when i no doubt will be on my knees again... if not tomorrow then no doubt the day after... it's a fragile trade off in this life of interdependence... to realise you can't frogmarch hearts towards healing... we are not an army but a struggling band of refugees...

today i cried for the hurt in the heart of another, and felt then tears for myself in my helplessness and brokenness fall and mingle with them... these tears were not alone... intertwining... speaking to each other in their cracked tones...whispering of the vulnerability in us all... a reminder that the place of care lies deep within the fault lines... our compassion and our grief are neighbours... and in caring for others we also might learn to care for ourselves...


and there the fingers strike their way across the keys all the same... and something still has been shared afterall...

...and so we keep going with the prayer of the lost, that, despite today's broken stumbling in the desert with our hearts' pain and grief so raw and so visible in our eyes, tomorrow might awaken us unto hope and find us exploring the kingdom, our sense of wonderment and adventure intact...

::the landscape on this journey of faith is as scarred as our hearts::

LB,x