There is a beautiful line from poet and author Wendell Berry, “We hurt, and are hurt, and we have each other for the healing. It is always healing. It is never whole."
That sums up quite nicely a large part of our purpose on earth.
After the passing of time and the living of life, we know too well that we hurt others and they hurt us. Life is an ongoing process of learning how to navigate this uneven path we are all on.
And in the midst of our hurting and being hurt there are those who are there for our healing.
This is a fundamental part of parenting. Our children, if they are to be themselves fully alive, emotionally healthy, and self-directed, must never doubt they are loved by their parents. And that whenever they fail, or get in trouble, or suffer illness, there will be healing at home.
This, too, is the core work of marriage, of spending life with a partner, of committing oneself to another person in a relationship of trust, intimacy, and love. Being a source of healing, whether the primary source or assisting one in finding it, is an essential part of loving another person.
And, when you stop to think about it, healing is indispensable to our humanity. We live in a broken world. And we are often broken people. That is not to say life is miserable and dark and hopeless. But we cannot deny that suffering is a part of our human journey. Healing is, as well.
When I was a minister I saw the hurting in so many experiences. People caught in addictions, marriages ruined by betrayal, ugly divorces, AIDS victims, healthy young people killed in car crashes, babies born with birth defects, beautiful people suffering from chronic depression or mental illness, the old alone and lost in a murky haze of a failed mind or a slowly withering body.
We don’t want to focus on it, but the truth is, life is filled with hurting people. And if we are ourselves even remotely healthy in body, mind, and spirit, then we can be healers for them. We can be healers for each other.
There is always the risk of going too far, exhausting our own inner resources trying to help. We can experience what someone has called, “altruism burnout.” And then we become the one in need of healing.
It is an endless circle, really, of caring and being cared for. But it is our human task, a responsibility that makes our existence here have substantial meaning.
We live in a time of moral suffering. Our nation is hurting. People have been damaged by the divisions among us. Families aren’t speaking. Friends have stopped contact with each other. We lack humane leadership. We lack a fundamental understanding of one another. We lack common decency. It is an “us against them” mentality and it is wrecking our lives.
Gibran, the mystic poet, wrote: “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
And the genius novelist, Charles Dickens, said, “I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
They both describe the result of finding healing. Of being in the presence of those who love us, who care for us with tenderness and affection, who respect and value who we are as a person, whatever our situation.
We are not seeing enough examples of this in daily life. Certainly not in the news, in politics, in religion, in the daily unfolding of our lives. I know it exists, in people we know and love.
In a nation of moral suffering and every other kind of hurt, I want to remember the healers. I want to gratefully receive their care and then follow their example.
© 2018 Timothy Moody
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