This morning I went for a walk after reading an especially
disturbing news item online, the details of which I won’t share here since it
was too disturbing to be repeated. For a long time recently, in fact, I was on
a news-free diet, because things have gotten so out of hand in the world that
sometimes it’s just too painful to know, even though as a former news reporter
and news hound I love to be aware of what’s going on (especially during
election season!)
As I was walking I asked myself the question, once again, the
question of how people who have gone through so much pain can ever be happy
again, how they can ever believe in God or some other divine force, how they
can even find the strength to ever again get up in the morning. It’s a mystery
to me how human beings can continue to pick themselves up when they have fallen
so hard, when their limbs and hearts are broken, when they’ve lost hope, when
everything has fallen apart.
Just as I asked myself these questions, I heard a bird
calling from the top of a sycamore tree. I could hear but not see him. I stood
staring at the tree for a long, long time, watching the light play through the
branches, listening to the call of the invisible bird. As I stared up, the tree
and sky were all I saw, all I thought of, and I was completely at peace as I
gazed. In that moment, my memory of what I had read this morning vanished. My
worries and fears left. I was only in one place, and in one moment, marveling
at the beauty of nature and the world.
The only way out of pain is through the present moment; it
is all we have. There is nothing we can do to erase the pain. But the bird and
its tree (or the tree and its bird) reminded me that there will always be moments when we can forget. There will always be moments.
