Pain - my revered teacher

​I read the words below in a book before I headed into the woods yesterday. When I read the words, I knew I'd read something powerful. Even if at first the words didn't make perfect sense to me. I suppose that's what long walks in the woods are for.

"In the end, all great spirituality is about what to do with our pain."

I wondered, if life was perfect - if life really was Eden - would I wrestle with my spirituality. If everything was in painlessly perfect alignment in my life, would I be looking for God? Would I need a God at all?

Is it possible I'd even come to believe I am God?

"We hesitate to eradicate the pain, since it is such a revered teacher."

The reality is, pain is the greatest teacher I've ever had. Pain is the foundation of any wisdom I have. How does that happen? How is it that when life is Eden, it feels like there is nothing to be learned. Life is just momentum.

But pain stops me. Pain begs me to pay attention. It begs me to hold a hand. But whose? I can never answer that question without reverence.

"It re-members us."

Pain has this way of breaking me apart, but then putting all the members of me back together again. Pain never fails to remember me and then reorganize me.

"Our wounds jostle from us what is false and leaves us only with a yearning for the authentically poetic."

Pain - wounds - they start telling me stories about myself that aren't true. They are not real. These stories, they are simply pain. But they are stories that don't want to go away. Is it really because I hesitate to eradicate them? Do I really want them to remain a part of me?

Do I really have a reverence for them?

I'm standing on a rock a thousand or so feet off the ground. I can see forever. I can see Eden. I can feel peace.

It's beautiful, really. This dance between pain and peace.

Peace never sends me in search of Eden. Pain almost always does. And more and more - I find it.

More and more - from a mountaintop - I can see what is not true about pain, and I can almost touch the truth I've been reaching for.

There is indeed something authentically poetic about that.

In that, is something quite spiritual.