I am sitting here holding things that create deep emotion in me. It feels like I am ‘tasting’ these emotions as they pass through my mind and enter my heart. Descriptions of taste are often associated with strong emotions, and my tasting them brings out the bitter, sweet, salty and sour in strong ways.
David came across a badly wounded cat on the road and stopped to tend to it. It was so badly wounded, he knew it could not be saved. So he gently, tenderly gathered it up, carried it to the side of the road and sat with it in his arms for the few moments it lived. He had no idea who this beautiful feline belonged to. He knew they would be distressed at loosing such a beautiful companion but he had no way of telling them. I could hear the tenderness as he shared the story mixed with his confusion that anyone could not only harm a living thing but that they could just drive away and do nothing about it. There is a sweet beauty in compassion while at the same time there is the bitter taste that pain and cruelty leave behind.
Several friends, who are very good writers, have been silent for some time. Recently I have read their new pieces that have the underlying taste of salt of the tears present in their respective journeys. What I hear is the wisdom that is growing within them, compassion with themselves and others, and how they are choosing to ‘walk out’ their stories in their actions in community.
I read the many tributes to Robin Williams and how he helped us laugh, yet how he struggled with addiction and depression, and as Anne Lamott writes “Here is what is true: a third of the people you adore and admire in the world and in your families have severe mental illness and/or addiction. I sure do. I have both. And you still love me. You help hold me up. I try to help hold you up. Half of the people I love most have both; and so do most of the artists who have changed and redeemed me, given me life. Most of us are still here, healing slowly and imperfectly. Some days are way too long.” I have walked through depression and many I love have, and are, walking this road. Many I love know the battle that addiction and depression brings to you. The salty taste of many many tears and the taste of bitterness from wounds, and the sour taste of regret surround these journeys. It is hard for those suffering to see that in this journey is the sweetness of who they are and what they have given to those they love and to those they never knew.
I am thinking of the refugee camps that are flooded in Sudan, of the people fleeing extreme fundamentalist warriors, and there is little food and few places to run to. I continue to hold the young women in Nigeria who have been taken from their school and held hostage, and seemingly there is little being done to find them and bring them home There are those in Israel and Gaza who have no home, no safety and they are the casualties of extreme thinking that leaves no space for peace, compassion, dialogue and working together. Chaos surrounds places like Ukraine and other countries. This suffering has no beauty that I can see and yet the courage I hear of and the beauty I see through many stories is amazing. My friend Erin, working at One Shot Project in Iraq, is opening a window on what courage looks like in the midst of deep suffering and uncertainty. Erin’s writing speaks of a strength that is beyond what I know.
I hold the treasured moments with Anna, my Granddaughter, as we picked raspberries and huckleberries together and her sweet conversations as we wandered around the garden. Then as she helped me set the table for an evening meal, the memories of my own Grandmother’s love and patience as she showed me how to pick black currents in her garden came flooding in. This is blessing and beauty, life shared, love expanded and love that totally surprises me still. Anna’s arrival came with much struggle and there is an intense sweetness that her beautiful being gives to her parents and all those who love her. This is a sweetness that is so very very precious. A sweetness that is held with tenderness and is a treasure to be protected.
Working with some young people in the cafe, watching them struggle with things that they don’t know, it seems that no one has taught them simple routines for a workplace. I silently remember all those who have taken my awkwardness, my inner pain that came out as anger, and they saw my hunger to learn, to know, and to grow. I have to step back and remember my Grandmother teaching me, my Mother showing me, and at an early age, my Dad taking me to work and telling me the importance of how to behave in a business setting. I remember my beloved friend Edith, who didn’t point out my mistakes, made because of not knowing, but instead she used humour to guide me, to teach me and to encourage me to learn as much as I could to do the job well. I have been nurtured and mentored by so many and now I find myself wondering how I can share that learning with these young people, to instruct them on the way to do things without humiliating them or making them feel inadequate. How can they be inspired to learn so their path becomes one of being built up, of carrying compassion and integrity into the future of their lives?
As I look back there are all the tastes of bitter, sweet, salty and sour. Tastes that each have their way of teaching how to find the good, to learn to step away from what does not nurture, what can be kept and what we must leave behind in order to more forward. There is deep gratitude for those who poured love, courage and wisdom into my life.
Learning to discern the sweet, the bitter, the sour and salty, will take me a life time. Yet as I continue to experience those tastes, it is those very flavours in all their combinations that give a full rich flavour to life. Today salt seems to be the strongest flavour, the salt of tears that have flowed, but the taste of the sweet, of all that is beautiful, is just as real and they mingle together.
