The Still Point

I’m asking us not to simply suffer but to feel it deeply. Is it worth it?

The first two lessons are two sides of the same coin, and similar to the tortoise and the hare. To balance slow and precise with fast and free, we need to see when the pain is too great to face. On one side, we cannot heal without getting dirt under our fingernails. On the other, our nervous system needs to curl up in a ball to integrate and process the deep suffering.

Are you in deep pain? Does your heart feel like raw hamburger? Can you allow the pain? No expectations. No needs. No shoulds and shouldn’ts.

Our duty is not to stave off suffering or to return to our old life. The real work happens in the dark. Deep under the soil, where we die and are reborn into unexpected, extravagant beauty.

But before the rebirth can happen, we need to willingly see the pain and walk through it.

To love another, we must let go of our ego, and take up into our hearts those whose life has disintegrated until they can stand up, face, and make sense of, their own existence. Can we take up another’s cross without being crushed by the weight?

Can we sit in the darkness? Are we willing to be with our pain to see the suffering of another?

And my life disintegrates…

I wake in a dark hospital room. Just the indirect lights behind me illuminate. A nurse walks over to the IV stand. Two bags hang, a big, bulging clear one and another, sucked dry, yellow liquid filling the creases. She swaps it with a full one, then changes out her gloves from the boxes affixed to the wall. Without looking up, she gently lifts my arm, reads the band and takes my pulse.

“Where’s Mom?”

Startled, she drops my arm and smiles. “Oh honey, you’re awake. Just a minute, I’ll go get the doctor.”

Minutes pass in silence until the room fills with doctors and nurses. The overhead lights pop on. I’m surrounded. They move too fast for me to follow. The air buzzes with their excitement.

“Where’s Mom?”

A penlight shines into my eyes while someone else puts a cuff around my right arm. “It’s okay, Angela, you were in a car accident.” The clinical voice rebounds in my foggy brain.

What? We were eating oatmeal. Now, I’m… Oh no, my homework?

“Where’s my backpack? Did someone turn in my homework?”

“I’m Doctor Ross. You’re in the ICU at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. You were air lifted here early this morning.” The army in my room poke and prod focusing on my left arm.

Slow down. I don’t understand. Mom?

“Why isn’t she in the bed next to me? Is she okay?”

“Can you feel that?” Doctor Ross pokes my arm in several places.

Stop. Please tell me then I can focus on this arm.

Before I can answer, another doctor asks me to move my fingers. Of course, see. I lift my head to watch the fingers wave but the wrist and arm… why doesn’t it move? I try harder. It remains motionless. What’s going on?

Doctor Ross continues, “The bicep and deltoid of your left arm is paralyzed. We still don’t know if this is permanent.”

Um, what? Okay, that’s fine. I crunch my eyes tight. What was I saying? Oh yeah. “Where’s Mom?”

“Your brother will be here in a few hours.” A nurse replies.

“Is she okay?”

There’s a deep burn in my right arm. Whoa, what was that? My head flies around to the right as a nurse removes a needle. Everything fades away.

Excerpt: Flying Lessons, Angela Kari Gutwein