Tag: sadness

Sadness

Journal & Essays

The sadness consumes. The sadness destroys. The sadness comes in and washes over the face of everything.

There is slowness, darkness, lull. Heaviness, memory, loss. The sadness loses you in a wave of emotion and all your senses are dragged down to the depths.

How do you keep on moving forward, when all you can register is the endless sinking-down?

There is not much to say, except to observe that, in your sadness, you come face to face with the most devastating facts of life – and although you feel as if you’re drowning, somehow, inexplicably, you keep breathing out and in, in and out, and then you wake to live out another day.

Broken Reverie

Poems

The choir came and the choir went.
The flower grew and the flower died.
Once, in a vision, she was a bride,
Walking lightly, trailing lace,
Dancing around ’til the night was spent.
What wonderment in her face,
What life! And then, the rain,
Like a sharpened knife,
Cut into the attic roof,
Stirring her from her happy dream,
Reminding her of the bitter truth.

Losing Someone You Loved

Journal & Essays

How can I begin to describe the pain of losing someone you loved?

Not only loved, but loved with the full force of your being, leaving nothing unsurrendered.

There will always be reminders of this pain – which is really a sorrow – when you touch upon the places in your heart that bring you back to that person and place and time.

Yes, there will remain places of your self that remember the sadness and difficulty of lost hopes and dreams.

And the sweetness of remembered joys will strike you, sometimes, with a sense of beauty that will never be repeated – at least not in that particular way.

There will be pain, and there will be the ache of an unfulfilled desire – but only when you allow yourself to doubt the possibility that something greater is still to come.

Certainly, there are no words that will capture the fullness and intensity and depth of your encounters with love – of your encounters with this person who was (and is) so beloved to you.

And yet, even in the darkness, there is light – a discovery which will most likely unfold only once you’ve accepted things as they are (or seem to be). And then, after a while, you’ll start to recover a semblance of joy, for it was joy that first made you love, and it will be joy that leads you, after a very long and tiring journey, back home.

Brief Thoughts (No. 30)

Brief Thoughts

You’ll see the world with clear eyes when you stop messing about in the shadows and step into the light.

“But what about the wisdom borne of darkness?” you ask. Naturally, it’s a question that brings you comfort, because you’re prone to proving your worth through your sorrow and pain.

Well, you won’t stop functioning if you give up a little sadness and trade it for some joy. Actually, the joy rather suits you, and it’s often the answer to the torturous questions that bring you dis-ease.

The Spirit of Lent

Journal & Essays

We are keeping the spirit of Lent – the spirit of surrendering something we desire very much. So we wait and we deny ourselves even the smallest of joys, hoping that our sacrifice won’t go unnoticed by GOD.

And yet, here we are, full of a sadness that can’t be destroyed.

Full of a sadness that could tear this page in two.

A sadness that would spill over our cup, making it run full, not with joy, but with sorrow too bitter for drinking.

And yet – isn’t that where we are? Isn’t that where we stand? Before the cross, asking not to drink from this cup, but swallowing it down if it can’t be avoided?

“Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.”

The prayer I’ve prayed a thousand times, neither understanding why I should pray it nor really desiring to pray it at all – but feeling compelled nonetheless to believe in its goodness and power and truth, and mouthing the words like a chant in the dark, hoping it might yet let loose a stray shred of light.

"Listen to a reading of this piece."

Brief Thoughts (No. 3)

Brief Thoughts

Will there ever be a time when I can stop trying? Or is that just the human condition, to ceaselessly strive?

…

The desire to rebel, to break loose, to act uninhibitedly – is just a reflection of the desire to be really and truly human. It’s evidence of the yearning to experience life fully and freely – not fearfully, fractionally, or in a cage.

…

How do you reach into the human heart and fix what is wounded? It is not a matter of making some sutures or replacing a valve. The mechanics of the operation are often unclear and ill-defined. Sometimes the patient lies on the operating table for months, or for years. If only such pains had a quick and pre-formulated repair. There would be far fewer hurting hearts. But, things being what they are, we have to make do – and if this means anything at all, know that, somewhere, someone is praying for you.

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