Stricken and Scorched

"Some of us sail through our troubles, and some have to live with the scars."

Elton John The Circle of Life

It's an interesting thing about scars. Have you noticed? In some cultures, scars are considered very beautiful and scarification is a sacred rite of initiation into adulthood. In others they are seen as something to be hidden, a sign of failure or shame. Remember when President Lyndon Johnson scandalized the public when he lifted his shirt to show his gallbladder incision?

You can't have a scar without a story. They are the physical reminder that something in life did not happen as planned. It might have only been a skinned knee from a bicycle fall that left a shiny silver dollar as a memento, maybe a chicken pox we wouldn't leave alone and now we lament the small crater left behind. There are other scars however, that bear silent witness to terrible suffering, or tragedy and violence. No matter the circumstances they all seem to be an invitation to the eye and the heart. Sometimes we turn our eyes too embarrassed to ask, sometimes we cover the mark in an attempt to forget they exist and then there are the times, in the safety generated by the net of love, we trust enough to share the story of their origins.

Yes, life is an opportunity for scars and some of the worst ones, the ones that continue to ache and throb and fever, are the ones we carry with no outward sign of their existence. In talking about this recently, I fell upon the phrase 'strike and scorch' as a way of trying to express the sensation of living through the events of life which leave an emotional scar whether or not they leave a physical one. I'm thinking of those times when we are literally stricken from the placidness and comfort of our day to day living and sent reeling into unknown territories. Death does this to people, that terrible word cancer does it, as do words like abandonment, neglect, betrayal. These are frightening words and they come armed to the teeth with the ability to leave us burned, scorched and scarred in the aftermath of their passing. We are only left with the language of the body, to try and express the pain of the spirit. Instead of having a scar to witness our experience, we are left to translate its impact across the pages of our lives. There we find a page almost torn from the bindings of our life, reflecting the enormity of what has happened to us. This is the strike. As terrible and significant as this may be, it is only the beginning of what lies ahead, for the pages that follow show how we respond to what has come upon us. For some the initial blow carries on page after page after page, trailing the pain and sorrow and struggle we encounter facing what has come to us. There is no way of knowing how many pages this will take of our life story. It will take what it needs to take. Regardless of the length of this chapter in our lives, which is unique to each person, there will always come as well, the moment for a new chapter to begin. This is the place where we choose to step out of the past and into the present. This is the moment the wound becomes the scar. Even though the pages of our life are forever scorched by what has happened to us, across the blackened and singed leaves, there is still remains the opportunity to move on and create our lives. This is the miraculous moment where we realize we are not our wound and that we can take what we have experienced and have it become something that deepens who we are instead of lessens us. That is when a scar heals and bears testimony to the integrity of our struggle. Instead of being something we hasten to hide, or cover up, we see it as a beautiful reminder of the triumph that comes from embracing everything we have suffered and claiming the unseen gifts within the wounding.

And see how the flesh grows back /across a wound, with a great vehemence,/more strong/that the simple, untested surface before./There's a name for it on horses,/when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,/as all flesh/is proud of its wounds, wears them/as honors given out after battle,/small triumphs pinned to the chest—(Jane Hirschfield)

Wounds will not heal unless they are cleaned nor will they close up if they are constantly picked at and kept open and festering. They do best when they are faced squarely, cleaned as gently and thoroughly as possible, and given the time and nurturing they require. Then they seal themselves and with time, slowly turn from an angry red welt, to pink and silver and then to pearly white. I find that a powerful metaphor for the transformation possible in our lives and spirits. We may be stricken, scorched and left for dead, but there among the blood and ashes we are also given the possibility to transcend and claim our own proud flesh.

I am the rest between two notes

Which are somehow always in discord

Because death's note wants to climb over—

But in the dark interval, reconciled,

They stay here trembling,

And the song goes on, beautiful.

Rilke