A friend and I came upon this site on a recent hike. Although I’ve taken this particular trail many times, I’d always walked it in the same direction. This time, something made me turn around mid-stride, and in doing so I saw something new.
A beautiful tree was made even more lovely by one of nature’s interventions. A large hole was burned through the center of its trunk. On this Spring day, the vivid, green grass showed through the hole, making it a natural picture window.
I peered inside the charred and hollowed trunk.
“How amazing that it can live after having been burned through like this,” I thought — and immediately caught the assumption behind the words: This tree would have been better off without the fire.
But even if this were true (and how could we possibly know?), the fact is that the fire happened. And afterward, the tree continued to grow and thrive. How different life would be if we could go through such life changing events and simply keep growing and thriving!
Why We Stay Stuck
What makes some upsetting events merely yucky and others excruciatingly painful? At a very basic level, it has to do with the extent to which the situation contradicts how we think things should be.
If a friend is late in meeting us for lunch, our reaction can be anywhere from unfazed to unreal. It depends on how strongly we believe that being on time is important, or link their behavior to our intrinsic worth, or think it means something about how much they love us.
A traumatic event, on the other hand, is so out of keeping with how we think or know things should be, that part of us gets stuck in disbelief at the moment of impact. The reaction is, “Wait! This can’t be happening! This is not right!”
And yet it did happen. We know that it did. And until the part that’s frozen in disbelief is reconciled to the facts, we will be somehow, in some way, immobilized and unable to move on with our lives.
What Healing Looks Like
All of this came to mind recently as I was dipping into Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks, and came upon the phrase, “…When you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness.”
This describes what happens when the emotional aftermath of trauma gets resolved. The mind and body get to stop arguing with what is. The dispute between how we wish it had been and how it was is silenced, and in that silence we come home.
Tolle wrote, “Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.” This grace blesses us with the capacity to know what we know, rest easy in the face of life’s constant surprises, and dwell in the silence of our infinite heart.
That tree, ravaged by fire, is not arguing with what is. It continues to grow and flourish. As for the hole, well, “that’s how the light gets in.”
Dear one, I invite you to face whatever fire has left its mark on your life. Take heart. This healing and grace is here for you.
