open hands

As surely as the sun comes, it rises and falls.  This deep, confusing, infuriating numbness wells up from inside and rears its ugly head to get my attention.  Ignoring it doesn’t work; so often I try and just forget that it’s there.  Pretending to be alright is pointless because eventually someone notices that all is not, in fact, right.

 

At times my eyes threaten to turn into waterfalls, refuse to stop gushing for any reason but death itself.  Sometimes it feels like nothing that words can describe, because my insides feel like nothing and emptiness at the same time.  It’s this lack of fullness that causes it, I think: the open space creates room for the nothing to fill it.  And so nothing fills me but empty right now, and I think of how the empty creates room for the filling.

 

When the fists start to clench, readying to fight for soul-filling, the empty can seem overwhelming.  Who can struggle with what they cannot see, cannot touch?  Even Jacob wrestled an angel, rolled around in the mud with him and walked away limping.

 

To enter this battle will mean wrestling with something unseen, unknown.

 

Walking from this battle will mean leaving with an undeniable wrench.

 

But who is to say that there must always be clenched fists in order to battle?  Can fists make a dent in the empty with their swinging and flailing?

 

But if fists unclenched, opened to the empty… readied for the fullness to come and fill the space?  Surely fullness will come.  Certainly something would come and fill the holes to make the whole.

 

It’s no coincidence that the weary receive rest and the burdened relieved.  No rocket science is needed to see that those ready to fight go and fight, and the ones still needing training stay and get training.  It makes sense that the ones needing help get the help they need; the sick are healed, the blind receive sight, the lame walk.  The well need not go to the physician for health: no, instead the ill receive with open hands the medicine to make them well again.

 

The fighting for life, for soul – that makes sense.  The clenched fists and arms raised and feet planted to wrestle down the sickness does no good.

 

What bedridden man wearies himself with standing?  Does he not wait for strength?

 

With palms up, opened, readied for the healing.  That’s how the sick man gets well.  This is how the lame man stood.  This is how the blind man accepted the mud.

 

With open hands, ready to receive the gift.

 

Clenched fists in fighting mode gets the sickened-already nowhere but sicker.