Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Paul Martin of Original Faith. Thanks Paul!
Today I’m mostly bedridden – in my sixteenth year of a rare, incurable disease. On 9/11, although seriously disabled, I was still employed as a school counselor at an elementary school just up Columbia Pike from the Pentagon. The day began as follows.
In Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC, the morning of September 11, 2001, was one in a string of clear, mild days that almost felt like the return of spring. As usual, I clicked off the news on my radio shortly before 8:30 AM and headed for Patrick Henry Elementary School, which stood almost directly across the street from my apartment.
I’d been scheduled to speak to a class first thing that morning and had just returned to my office when our principal made a quick detour to step inside my door. With a roomful of second graders at her back, Cintia spoke quietly. “Have you heard the news?” she asked.
“I was listening to the news before heading out this morning…” I didn’t know what she was referring to.
Cintia started to tell me something about a plane crash in New York when she paused in mid-sentence: “Did you hear that?” she asked, looking at me intently. I played it back… I had — a low rumbling sound that had lasted two or three seconds. We would soon learn that a plane had just struck the Pentagon a couple miles away.
The rest of the day was a blur. And in the days, weeks, and months that would follow, my longstanding feelings of anger and indignation around my personal situation, as well as those that initially flared up in reaction to the terrorist attacks, were blown into oblivion – and many things fell into place. Things I’d had intimations of for years and, at one level or another, all my life.
During the months prior to 9/11, my condition had been deteriorating more rapidly than ever. I had been doing everything in my power to resist the gathering darkness – but there it was.
Four fiery crashes – and there it was again. Reality. Reality that featured immense and undeniable darkness. The darkness of witnessing explosions shatter a beautiful morning. The darkness of the terrorist mind and the social injustices that helped shape it. The darkness of the deaths of victims and of their families and friends facing lifetimes of loss. The darkness of senselessness, with its outraged and unanswerable, “Why?”
It was as if the fireballs that had instantaneously affected so many other lives as they glittered across a planet’s television screens had publicly proclaimed the undeniable existence of a darkness that I had been experiencing in private for so long. Yet the nation’s life would go forward. And so would mine.
Not many things are black and white, but this is one:
Own the darkness when it comes
Or see the light extinguished.
Own the darkness of your unfair share, for there is one world that is strewn and streaked with darkness and light. Great pain brings us to see that we are no exception. What happens happens. The spinning world is streaked and dappled. A single shifting shaft or shadow can make our little lives appear specially blessed or specially cursed. Neither is true, and each of us should be prepared for change; for the streaks and patterns move and morph like clouds over a weather map, bringing both calm and chaos.
Accept the darkness and accept the light – and lean toward the light. Lean toward what you feel but cannot see, like a plant under the sun.
There is only One whole world, and it is dark, it is light, and it is leaning slightly and always toward the light. It is All inexplicable.
There is deep darkness – terrible, painful, haunting shadow. It can even overshadow our greatest dreams, and yet faith tells us that the World’s dream is so much greater: like a far-off dawn just now touching the tips of our tallest trees, illuminating little, but just enough for us to run toward light.
Lean, look forward, and run. The shadows may even swallow your last chance on earth for what you call success or happiness, and which may indeed have been a good thing. But there is such a thing as darkness, and none are exempt from either its certain eventualities or worst possibilities.
Indignation and resentment do nothing except make us lose our forward poise and balance, that asymmetry which is the measure of our humanity. They only rob us of the good things that are left, the helpful inclinations that may otherwise have been possible for us, including possibilities that we may not foresee. Our outrage only slams the door on God. Our violent protests only shut out the Allness of our owness.
In desperation and love, through the fearful sense of falling backward and losing ourselves, and the loving desire to find our balance in the wider and more truthful World, we seek union with the asymmetrical, forward, lightful bent of life’s dark soul in us.
Accept the fullness of what you cannot understand. Allow the Allness of your owness to settle over your shoulders.
What is, is. Let me be a piece of that,
Amid the horror, explosions, shatteredness,
The strands of sense and beauty, the irresolvable whole.
WHAT IS is, and I shall be myself.
Contradictions are not resolved, yet I begin to resolve
The contradictions. I do not feel the tension any more.
The Whole is doing what it does, and I
Am wholly doing what I do.
In the crosshairs now, I see WHAT IS.
I cannot miss!
Desiring nothing for my splintered self,
I am being every inch something.
I care, but do not care.
I let go of my stake in all former aspirations;
Aspiring to nothing, I am occupied, every inch, with being something.
The worst cannot undo the act of what I am doing, and the best
Cannot change it. I am here. I am desperate, wise, strong
And live now beyond the land of my own dreams.
None of this is on my time. I resent nothing and no one.
I share in the whole world by laying claim to none of it,
Tasting what is sweet and bitter even in my own life
Like a sample off a plate in someone else’s home.
I am not here to stay and know it, and I no longer have a care
Because I wish to stay sane enough to keep caring.
Care like you died and kept on caring.
Care without a care, almost in just the way so many other events
Happen with no reflection or without meaning to,
But only because you mean it so much
That you are willing to be as heedless as it takes.
Become as ignorant of the parts and the frictions between them
As you were once so conscious of them in relation to yourself.
Be aware of being who you are in the arms or in the teeth of what is.
Forget all that might have been or might not be and there you are.
Once, long ago, I knew a way of great and growing joy. For many years now, I have known a way of great and increasing pain.
Suffering, we become empty. Joyous, we find more space. Either way, a new identity surges into the void that opens us up far beyond the borders of what we once called self.
On the way, there is an ego to outgrow and, eventually, a life to give up for a greater.
Where do you stand?
Paul Maurice Martin is author of Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You and blogs at www.originalfaith.com. He holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School and an M.Ed. in Counseling from the University of New Hampshire.
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Wow. This is truly amazing and inspiring. Thank you Albert, for publishing this, and thank you, Paul, for writing it. I can’t wait to dive into your blog now. I’m officially a fan. Your writing is simply awesome, as evidenced in this post. I’m really blown away, I don’t know what else to say.
so many nuggets to ponder.. and read again and again…
beautiful. much gratitude for your words.
Jay and Haley, really appreciate it. I bet there are still lots of untold stories from that day – how it affected people…
Jay, it’s my pleasure. It really is an amazing post, isn’t it?
Paul, you always write beautifully. I share your belief that we are headed for the light though we live in a world where both dark and light exist together.
Paul, well, I was already a fan, but you have outdone yourself here, my friend. Thank you so much for sharing this. I love the phrase ‘lean into’ the shadows. I have been pondering this a lot lately. How often even our good intentions cause us to shy away from pain and darkness, to deny its existence. But it can only be gone through, only be seen in entirety in relation to light. Namaste-
Simply beautiful. That’s all I have to say.
Hey, Paul… each time I learn a little more of your life story, I am infinitely more amazed with the person you have become. This is no exception.
Thank you for sharing your heartfelt story.
Paul, I find your connection of the light and the darkness, as you traverse through your experience, really interesting. I would love to read your thoughts on “what really matters”
Thank you for clearly showing how the constant interplay of shadow and light distracts us, creating the illusions which hide the truth (under the sub title, “Forms of Asymmetry.”)
Paul, both the subject and YOUR style have a starkness that is real, creative and pungent. We can meditate on this stuff and the incredible meaning you’ve managed to tease out of this experience as a pivotal turning point in a polar life (acknowledging the grappling with your physical condition).
I’m blessed to have read, bless you for that. Steve
I’m happy people are finding these words meaningful because this isn’t an easy area to find words for.
Celeste, on what really matters, I guess in this context I’d say “being here” – and whether for better or worse. Something, in other words, like “integrity” – but it’s a kind of integrity that occurs at the interface of who we are with what I like to call, paraphrasing St. Paul, the One in whom we live and move and have our being. This way people are free to think of it as “God” or just “life.” I think that how we think about it matters much less than how we live it.
Depending on our circumstances, integrity can be the foundation of great joy or for more strength than we may have ever imagined we had. Either way, this kind of integrity can also be spelled “peace,” and it increases our capacity to relate well to others.
Paul is an inspiration to me. He lives his words. Thank you, Paul, and Albert, for having him here.
You’re welcome everyone. I’m really glad Paul wrote for me too!
“There is deep darkness – terrible, painful, haunting shadow. It can even overshadow our greatest dreams, and yet faith tells us that the World’s dream is so much greater: like a far-off dawn just now touching the tips of our tallest trees, illuminating little, but just enough for us to run toward light.”
I knew a darkness once that overshadowed my greatest dreams. The immense feeling of regret and a mind that would not stop playing the images of the man I never was and always wanted to be. A man that seemed too far—unreachable.
I remember 9/11. I landed in Baltimore Washington Airport minutes after the first plane hit and had t drive to Richmond. It was crazy. I remember getting to my hotel and calling my mother. I just realized she was the first one who I called that day, AND the voice I heard in my head the day I decided not to commit suicide. “The Greatest gift a child can give is that their parents they outlive.”
OK, I realized my comment was a little doom and gloom. I forgot to mention how grateful and unimaginable my life has become today! Today I AM that man I imagined!
Thanks Paul and Albert for sharing this!
Hi Paul. I don’t know what it is about a great poem that speaks to me in ways that great prose cannot. “Desiring nothing for my splintered self,
I am being every inch something.” You couldn’t have stated the lesson of acceptance and gratitude any better. Simply “Being Here” and loving the breath of life is what really matters most. Do you mind if I put your poem on my site? (I tend to collect poems there.)
Jared, not gloom and doom to me at all. If this were heaven, we’d find no religion and spirituality section in the bookstores, lol…
There are lots of people who have been or are now in similar situations. So when those who’ve lived to tell the tale do so, that has to be a good thing…
Brenda, that would be great, thank you.
Where there is a light , there is a shadow, When we see the shadow , we know there is a light…
It was traumatic for us to see it on television. There are times when you wish you could understand the minds of such people better…It pains me, for never have I thought of humans as bad..
Sometimes we can understand ourselves and our whole, only if we see ourselves as a part of the whole, detached. At that point you wish, you wouldn’t need to fight, argue, want but then you also understand those things are part of of the path you have taken.
One day the path will peter out, then we can forget the path. Should we fight those people?
Or should we feel pity for them , for being mislead? Our anger is a sign of helplessness or pity is a sign of high handedness, either way we do one own any good.
Everyday, we hear people die. We see majors, politicians, beggars , middle class people die. Yet only when someone close dies, does true grief haunt us..
But what if everyone is close to us? How can we see our left hand cut the right? Should we favor the right, because we are right handed? Or should we take it as a challenge and join the left? Either way it is a part of us.
You realize that ultimately, neither have a purpose and choosing either is not really choosing a hand but rather choosing two different worlds. But what if we make a choice, not to take the side of either and have both are hands, the position in which we are way better?
How do we appease both? they want different things, yet they are a part of you.Should you control them and drive them to a few certain goals?
For all you know oneday they might decide we are better dead and might stab the heart, there ends all. Neither exist.
But if we can clap and make them act together and show them they are one, the world will be much better.
Yet is it that easy? no.
” the goal is infinite, the paths are infinite, the ways are infinite, the universe is infinite, all paths lead to infinity. ”
Every war on my path, I cannot ignore, so I try to broker a peace. But if that fails, that doesn’t mean I fail, it means that they made their choices, I cannot change their views but only try to be a catalyst. So if I am of no use, I do not waste myself, but walk on, hoping that in the future I am of better use.
The failure might haunt me, over and over, but I know that I need to accept the light and the dark. Accept that the dark , the shadows are present but not accept that they are the right, for , for my sight, it is the light that leads.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
Vishesh – I like your “riff” here on my post.
I agree – it can be hard not to demonize others, but in the end it’s easier than the way of “us vs. them,” “punishment,” revenge and so forth – because to me, that looks like the way of self destruction for us as a species, not only because of the direct harm it does but through how it makes us take our eye off the ball on things that should concern us all – like what we’re doing to the environment.
Martha – Thank you –
Hey Paul!
really really cool post.
so prophetic and personal and descriptive… amazingness.
“Suffering, we become empty. Joyous, we find more space. Either way, a new identity surges into the void that opens us up far beyond the borders of what we once called self.”
- and either way, suffering or joy, everything is okay. the suffering and the joy dance on the surface and sometimes we feel bad. and sometimes we feel good. but who we really are, underneath all that, never changes…
keep well mate
alex – unleash reality
Alex, thanks so much, and that’s my sense too – that there is something underlying all our usual associations with ourselves…
While I have learned to let go of the anger that i felt on that particular day, the sorrow I feel at the loss of lives is something that will stay with me forever.
Jen – Me too.
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