In church on Sunday we sang a song titled, “We Cannot Measure How You Heal.” I’ll be honest, usually when I sing in church I don’t have a clue what I’m singing about, but as I sang through this hymn I was struck by it’s message. After we finished singing, I wrote down the following excerpt:
“But present too is love which tends the hurt we never hoped to find, the private agonies inside, the memories that haunt the mind. So some have come who need Your help and some have come to make amends, as hands present in the touch of friends. Lord, let Your Spirit meet us here to mend the body, mind, and soul, to disentangle peace from pain, and make Your broken people whole.”Most days I don’t like to think that I’ve picked up some baggage over the course of my short life. I don’t have the sort of personality that likes to revisit old pain, but every once in a while I have no choice. When I least expect it, the past asserts itself on my present and clouds my vision of the future. We aren’t always aware of this pain, but we all carry with us “the memories that haunt the mind.”
These memories often hold us back because they remind us of our weakest, most vulnerable moments. They remind us of times when we felt unloved. They remind us of when we failed. In these memories there is a lie that we will never amount to any more than that little boy or that little girl. I hate lies, but I especially hate the lies that trap us with small dreams. In the same way that the hymn speaks to the hurt of our past, I have been thinking a lot about the fears of our future. Like memories of the past, these can paralyze us and steer us away from our calling. So the other day I came up with my own metaphor for life somewhat following in the legacy of Rilke’s Letter To a Young Poet #4:
Chaos and despair. The flower has fallen from your brown, curly hair. But look up to the field of new days the Lord has given you. Pick each one with joy and vigor knowing that it too will fall. When it dies it will become the earth that composes the future. But don’t simply examine the earth! You cannot possibly know how it will direct the color and shape of the future. Simply know that each day the flower is restored and replaced. In the same way, don’t look past it to the other flowers in the field. They are like specks of color on a painting: limited representations of reality. A closer look doesn’t tell you any more than what you already knew: this day too will come. And when it does, as if sprouted from the canvas itself, that day will desire your attention and affection. But that day is not today. Today, as is true in the case of a painting, you must take a step back and begin to simply appreciate what you cannot understand. The future for what it is.So that’s my thought for today: what you can’t understand should not dictate your outlook. Rather, let what is true guide you and let yourself breathe in the space you have been given. Today. As Rilke writes,
“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”Amen.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 