This morning I was reading letters and responses that people have written to an author named “Sugar” which were printed in a magazine called The Sun. One of my favorite magazines of all time. Well, the only magazine I’ve ever continuously received and read each month for many years.
Someone had written to this woman named Sugar wondering if it was OK to NOT be speaking to her dad. This woman had HAD IT with her father.
Most of us have had the experience of wanting to shut down communication with someone else when we disagree or argue with them, or feel very hurt by them, or just too scared of them. It just seems like too much, too hard, too stress-producing, too uncomfortable, too painful.
I myself have had this experience, not so long ago even.
There is no right or wrong way to be around stopping talk with someone, of course, each experience is unique. But I liked how Sugar answered this writer. Sugar said “I will tell you about my own situation with my own father” and she told that story.
The story went like this: father gets mad, daughter gets hurt, daughter gets mad, no communication for many years, daughter reaches out, father gets mad, no communication again for years, father reaches out, daughter gets hurt, father gets mad, no communication again.
As I read the story, I realized that I expected the daughter and father to reconcile, to talk, to fall into each others’ arms at the end.
But it didn’t go that way. It doesn’t always go the way we like. Sometimes people need, apparently, to not communicate with each other. I’ve been the one myself to say I need a break, I can’t do this, I need to be quiet for awhile.
Doing The Work is like laying every idea I have down about what would be MY idea of a good outcome. It is seeing who I would be without my stories. It is leaving everything I know behind. It is opening to the wide sky, the vast earth, the limitless mind.
One of my favorite recordings, that I listen to every few months, is the haunting and beautiful poetry by David Whyte. A dear friend sent this one to me again recently, so I knew it was time to hear it once more.
Communication, silence, waiting, re-connecting, silence. Who knows how it will unfold, but it is all Love in the end. All of it.
In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.
Step toward the cold surface,
pray the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,
the true shape of your own face.
Much Love,
Grace