I WAS MOVED BY our conversation last night. I understand how you feel the presence of suffering always in the background, juxtaposed against the peaceful times and moments of abundance we chance upon. I’ve felt this too and have come to sense that we all take turns in these places, and that it does no good for everyone to be suffering at once. When blessed to be well, we balance the world by being conduits of light for the time being, as long as we stay touchable.
The ever-present call of compassion is to widen our circle and never close our hearts to those in need. This doesn’t substitute for helping others in real time. But when unable to help, our commitment to feeling blessed when we’re blessed adds light to the dark and distributes the weight of the world, as long as we let in the pain of others. When suffering myself, I’ve felt discarded by those who remain self-enclosed in their happiness, but I’ve also felt uplifted by the happiness of those who don’t forget those who are hurting. Their tenderness arrives like the sun warming me in my painful places.
The plight of the less fortunate is always with me. This awareness led me to write the poem on the facing page.
This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.
