“Oh People.
Look among you,
it’s there,
your hope must lie.”
Rock Me On the Water by Jackson Browne
Surviving in a world that has increasingly become more inhospitable is challenging. Thriving in this same world is miraculous. Strangely, the trick is not really a trick, it is form of heartbreak. Persistent heartbreak. The scarred heart is the one that has been broken over and over by the disappointment that attends loving. This is not a paean to the wonder of the heart’s ability to love, it is recognition of the heart’s resilience. There is strength in the rising repair of great loss. This strength becomes an asset, a kind of power, when it is applied against what seem to be the odds. It is the strength behind any proclamation that claims to be “ STRONG.”
This strength isn’t a matter of will. Maui isn’t going to become more because the citizens intend it. Something else, much more mysterious and miraculous is underway. And painfully, all the destruction unleashed it. A scar upon the heart of Lahaina is forming. It is a product of a quality of the heart that is all too unrecognized. The heart has the ability to heal and enlarge itself. Not from merely breaking, but from returning to the source of heartbreak again and again. This isn’t about co-dependent suffering that needs to stop, it’s about the disaster of living.
There is some existential force that waits within us. It has an unfathomable magnitude. When enough of us are reduced by circumstance, usually by natural disaster, sometimes by human terrorism or accident, then this force arises within those who have been laid low. It is some primal aspect of the human heart. It suffuses those who have been viscerally touched, who identify with the true vulnerability of being human, who know their own perishability. An unpredicted power arises that binds individuals into something greater, a being-ness that encompasses and embraces. It is a collective experienced as “we,” but really is more alien than that, it is “us,” but beyond us. Some people refer to it as a field, referring to some kind of energy, some call it communitas, a state of consciousness that arises with enough loss, but I think it is the way of hearts, at the deepest, un-feelable level, hearts that are linked. Being human has some kind of cosmic linkage which can only be seen and felt under the rarest of circumstances.
Disaster brings out the best of us. Have you ever wondered why? Because it reduces everyone to a level of nothingness that allows for the humble embrace of what is, and the ability to identify with anyone’s feelings. Equality is rampant amongst the dispossessed. Strangely this strength, this unity, this belongingness, lies at the center of loss. To get to where we are all connected, is to renounce all your unique strengths (not completely), in favor of what makes one most human. Going to this place, even inadequately, and incompletely, serves the heart, scarring it with loss, and helping it strengthen for the future.
The Phoenix that arises from the ashes, comes from another place. It is a place that seems magically connected to this one. It isn’t magic that sets the Phoenix free, but the humbleness of emptiness, the reductions of Life, the will to be broken. The Phoenix rises from what remains.
The scarred heart isn’t just a collective phenomenon. Each of us is endowed with the powers of the Universe. Resilience is a sign of Life. It is in each of us. The Phoenix will come through you, if you go down far enough. Do that with others — so that we go out in a blaze of glory — a Phoenix inexplicably rises.
