Hi, friends.

That turn in our exploration that I mentioned previously is here.

We’ve spent a long time wading into the deep marshes of pain, haven’t we? My heart has carried two realities at once as we’ve journeyed together: sadness at the heaviness of the pain, and a fierce emboldenment to make room for the reality of it and protect this space to honor it.

Today, as we begin to shift our position to look at suffering from some new angles, I want to go back to where we started. What began this exploration?

It was a poem about the beauty and intricacy of the heart:

I Promise
Has not the Architect, Love, built your heart
in a glorious manner,
with so much care that it is meant to break
if love ever ceases to know all that happens
is perfect?
And where does anything love has ever known
go, when your eye and hand can no longer
be warmed by its body?
So vast a room your soul, every universe can
fit into it.
Anything you once called beautiful, anything
that ever
gave you comfort waits to unite with your
arms again. I promise.
— Hafiz

Suffering comes from a brokenness of heart. A marring of the perfection of love we once knew creates a detachment, a fracturing, a shattering, a disintegration of being.

It’s pain.

The pain of suffering can be experienced in the body, yes. But even the pain of bodily suffering affects us at the heart level. It crowds our hearts with questions of love, worthiness, significance, meaning, care.

Let’s explore, together, how the heart might subsist in suffering, and how the heart might mend.