Thursday, January 19, 2023

Healing takes time

This morning I read a post that caused me to pause some. I read Kat Garcia Hunt's posts daily. They often cause me to pause, offering me encouragement, insight, or something else. I was introduced to Kat's postings by her husband Patrick, whom I met several years ago in an Advent group. His yearly Advent wreath in his yard have encouraged me for years.  I have just "met" his wife recently and her posts, both the words and the art, have been uplifting and encouraging. The post included a cool photo, of a water whirlpool, but what stood out to me was the earthworm in the poem. I looked all day for an earthworm. I finally found one, on my afternoon walk. It's not a complete one, but it fits.

The reading/quote this morning was this: 

Healing comes less like a falcon
with mighty wings,
and more like an earthworm
that slowly, slowly moves
beneath it all, tightening up,
then stretching out, tightening up
and stretching out, a simple
two-part rhythm. Some days,
that is all the body can do.
Contract. Expand. Contract. Expand.
In the meantime, through this
artless act, what is dense
becomes porous.
In the meantime, what is stuck
and clotted gets moved around.
What is dead passes through,
is processed by the grit inside.
There are tunnels now in the soil of me,
thin channels of recovery—
a blessed loosening,
a gradual renewal. It’s unhurried, but
I feel the air, the rain,
the life coming in.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I am not familiar with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. First, let's learn a little about the author. You can read about her here.  She lives in Colorado. Hmmm... next time I'm in that awesome state, maybe I can look her up. :)

Her poem, "How the Healing Comes", can be found here.

How the healing comes..... I didn't know the title until just now.  What stood out to me as I read it this morning was that healing comes slowly, like an earthworm. "Contract. Expand."  As I read the poem, it reminded me of Chardin's "trust in the slow work of God". Healing does come slowly, or at least it has been for me. It is taking months upon months for healing and I'm not fully there yet.

However, I am encouraged in that what is stuck is being moved around and what is dead is passing through, there is recovery and there is a loosening, there is renewal, life is coming in.

There are many things attributing to my healing process-- LOTS of outdoor time, silence, solitude, time apart, time away, time serving family, therapy, spiritual direction and supervision, spiritual practices, painting, putting up guttering, putting together a bench from scratch (cutting the wood, painting it, etc.), hiking, walking, travel to CO and UTAH, etc. 

Here is Chardin's "Trust in the Slow Work of God", which was shared at my last in person residency this past November. It was another one of those "cause for a pause" moments. Impactful. Meaningful.

"Trust in the Slow Work of God" 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955)

Healing. It's a good thing. It's okay for it to take time.

May it be so.

Rev. Deb


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