Those who have been in active combat often suffer PTSD from the horrors that they have witnessed. But all of us have been witness to horrors, whether through personal experiences of violence or injustice or from more distant views of just how inhumane people can be.
What helps you to make sense of the worst things that you have seen?
Breaking Ground
Living in the violence of spring—
living in a time
where shells are cracking
and shapes alter,
who can afford to risk
forgetting the danger,
forgetting the moment
the crocus bulb breaks ground,
never knowing whether
snow or sun or ice
awaits in warm or jagged welcome….
There are no choices here—
no careful path or
reasoned way,
no holding in reserve for
some more settled,
more propitious time,
but only the unconsidered
faith of the crocus
whose saffron petals echo
or demand the sun.
—Lynn Ungar
What is struggling to break ground in your life?
“When you are broken open you get to discover for the first time what is inside you.”
―Bryant McGill
What have you discovered inside yourself through being broken open?
Sometimes in the face of injustice we gather to protest—to chant and speak out and demand change. But other times we create healing in quieter ways—by singing and praying and mourning and seeing by the light of many candles that we are not alone.
How do you help to bring healing in public ways?
At one point it was quite the thing for rock musicians to smash their guitars onstage. Folk musicians, not so much. Perhaps someone just got really, really frustrated trying to learn the guitar.
What makes you so frustrated that you just want to smash something?
