kissing it all better

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The air has grown softer this morning, less raw. Skies remain grey and raindrops cling to the screen outside the window, but the rain, which came down with unremitting insistence yesterday, has stopped. The buds on the trees look fat and happy.

This morning, before coming here, I read an internet bulletin board where questions of loneliness and explanation caught my eye.

Loneliness: We can not share experience. "Oneness" salves the wound even as it inflames it.

Explanation: How could something be acknowledged as 'true' if it cannot be explained? If you say something cannot be explained, isn't that just another explanation?

I feel very fortunate to have encountered a spiritual-endeavor format that encourages determination. I may not be terribly good at it, but a practice that incorporates body, mouth and thought at a single blow ... well, even a mediocre student like me may be better off than s/he would be growing piles in a pew or filling the bookshelf with some new explanatory and lonely-making compendium.

When kids are little, they may run crying to their mothers or fathers with the latest cut or bruise. And one of the things that mom or dad may do is to "kiss it better." Not a single thing is changed about the cut or bruise and yet when mom or dad "kisses it better," it is, however fleetingly, better in fact. That's the magic of mom or dad ... or anyway they seem to get the credit.

And that's the magic of our own determination ... to place our lips on this cut or burise, this world full of pain and sorrow, and "kiss it better." Nothing changes about the cut or bruise, the pain or sorrow ... but when we put our determined lips to work, things do, in fact, become all better.

If you want a saccharine sweetness, buy another book or find another explanation.

If you want the facts, exercise determination.
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