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A Few Invitational Thoughts on Grieving

Full Writing, Ours
The following words were offered,  over 20 years ago, to someone who had just suffered the loss of a loved one.
I would just offer a few words of reflection that I hope may be helpful. Places of darkness, such as you are now in, can be so overwhelming as to feel like an endless tunnel from which there is no escape. Yet the very oppressiveness that they impose and its painful burden are an echo of our longing and struggle and hope to move through and beyond them. While it may seem faint, like the distant voice of a small child, this yearning is as real as the pain that blows against it like a strong wind. A basic assurance that I would try to give you, in light of my own experience, is that the heartache and sadness do lessen in time, that it is possible to experience joy again on the other side of sorrow, that the feelings that hold us prisoner do eventually become resources and sources of strength. In the meantime, it seems essential just to place one foot after another as we walk through that tunnel, while holding fast to the conviction–even if we cannot feel it–that we will walk into the light.
One thought that may help is the realization that the experience of pain and loss are themselves the other side of the intensity and depth of love both received and given. Where the bond has been exceptionally close, where the love has had an unconditional quality, and where the death is all too sudden, the sense of loss and incompleteness and irreplaceability become all the more acute. When my younger brother died, I just wanted to be able to talk to him. It seemed that our conversation was interrupted in the middle of a sentence we could not finish. Still, it is the love that is most real, most basic and most enduring, and it gradually absorbs the pain. While it probably seems totally unrealistic now, the experience of this kind of love carries with it an undercurrent of gratitude, a gratefulness that something so good has been and endures, though the sudden ending of its present form makes it seem so brief and incomplete. I guess what I am trying to say is that the essential goodness remains and gradually makes itself felt more strongly as the elements of pain slowly recede. Perhaps what is most important is to cling to and not let go of the hope–even though you cannot feel it–that you will move beyond where we are now.
I once read an article on joy that impressed me by its honesty and insight, and by the way the author spoke of finding joy on the other side of sorrow. I later found out that her sorrow was chiefly caused by the self-inflicted death of one of her children, the pain of which seems unimaginable.  There is often a feeling of guilt that accompanies the death of someone close, especially when it is sudden. We can worry that we may have failed to do something or left the relationship jarringly incomplete. The “if onlys” that are part of every bond can be felt as guilty regret in these instances. We cannot argue the guilt away, even if we recognize that it usually has no real foundation. Sometimes it is best just to let it be, as part of our yearning for a completeness that is always beyond our grasp but always within our longing. This incompleteness is part of every human bond, but is felt so keenly when someone dear to us dies. And it can be an incompleteness that is felt both in terms of the love we give them and the love we receive from them.
I have noticed that there are a whole array of feelings that arise when someone so dear to us dies. They can be surprising and overwhelming in their intensity, in their erupting within us at unexpected times and places, and in the very kind of feelings that arise. We can even feel angry at someone who died because it feels as if that person has left us and we feel abandoned. At first, it seems inappropriate to feel that way, but at second glance it is really quite understandable. I remember as a child thinking at first that every feeling is forever, that I would always feel the way I did at that moment, especially when the feelings were unpleasant–that I would never be friends with that other 6-year-old again, that I would stay lost forever, that maybe after getting hit by the truck I would never walk again. But these feelings, as well as the really pleasant ones, seemed to weave themselves in and out of the fabric of my life. Then as an adult, when I first experience the death of someone I love, … I realize it is different and more difficult that I had ever imagined, and I am again like the child who thinks it will last forever. Yet this experience, too, over time seemed to be forged into something precious that is more than the pain.
These are some thoughts that come to mind, that are perhaps not expressed too clearly. In terms of practicalities, beyond maintaining the daily routine, and trying to eat sufficiently to keep up basic physical health, I think it is really important to regard and treat yourself with a gentle kindness, the way you would respond to someone else in a similar situation. …. Part of the healing process, I think, is telling our story, and retelling it from within, especially the parts that are now so vividly felt, until the need to do so gradually lessens–until this part of our whole life story becomes a part of our story, and not our whole story or our whole identity.
I think it is also really important to keep contact with genuine friends, …, and to allow them to love us. Just as the loss of love wounds us, perhaps it is the receiving (and giving) of love that heals us. No one can replace the unique and precious love that is lost through death. But I think a genuine caring is always healing. It does not take away our wounds but holds them in caring hands. It does not take away the hurt, but does help us to bear it. I really appreciate the comment of Henri Nouwen who says that the real friend is not the person with the answers, but the person who sticks it out with us even when there are no answers, and that very staying with or being with is part of the answer. It is probably good, too, to engage in other activities with friends, such as movies, concerts, even hockey games. In this vein, it can sometimes be helpful to have certain times when we will explicitly think and feel and talk about our heartache with friends–and always do so when we really need to–but sometimes decide that for a time we will talk about or do something else.
It can also be helpful sometimes to write down our feelings, even to visualize our hurting self as a small child with whom we engage in a conversation, first listening and then responding. This too can be done with writing. Writing a condensed summary of our relationship in a kind of poem or story can be useful. Sometimes a ritual can be helpful, one in which we express something of the process that we expect to go through over a long period of time, such as drawing on a piece of paper an image of the love and an image of the hurt, and them making a gesture of separating the two and letting go of the hurt. It’s really a matter of expressing a pattern into which we can gradually grow. Reading enriching novels, seeing good plays or concerts, can also be helpful, even if at first it almost seems as if we have to force ourselves to get involved in them.
Well, I will close for now. I offer these thoughts to you in an invitational way, to try them on, so to speak, to see if they are at all helpful. The thought that came to me as I was preparing for a talk, was that, while we hurt, we are more than our hurt. May I wish sincerely that this “more” emerges more and more fully in your own heart….
      Norman King, February 20, 2003

Light and Rest: Ancient Images of Lasting Meaning

Full Writing, Ours

In ancient times, the deep longing of the human heart for lasting meaning and fulfillment was expressed in the images of light and rest. Early liturgies spoke, or rather sang, of lux perpetua and requiem aeternam–light everlasting and rest without end. A beautiful expression of this longing is found in John Rutter’s Requiem.

These images of longing arise, it would seem, from the experience of fearful darkness and toilsome labour. The experience of darkness reflects the cycle of night and day, of winter and spring. Darkness has been associated with the unknown, with danger and fear. Light has been said to dispel all forms of darkness. The dawning of a new day marks a new beginning. I remember a friend who lived in a dangerous situation commenting that when he awoke in the morning, his immediate feeling was gratitude. He was grateful that he had lived to see the sunrise of another day.

Spring is a time of lengthening days, a time of more light, and a time when new life emerges anew from the darkness of winter. In some stories, light marks the beginning of creation. Enlightenment marks the dawning of a new and fuller awareness. The lux perpetua of early liturgies is an image expressive of hope for a light and warmth that dispel fear, overcome betrayal and brokenness, and convey vision and awareness, caring and compassion..

In That Lucky Old Sun, Louis Armstrong sings of the struggles of work and family life, with a voice that expresses at once longing and hope: “Fuss with my woman, toil for my kids/ Sweat till I’m wrinkled and gray.” In contrast, “that lucky old sun has nothin’ to do/ But roll around heaven all day.” Here the images of light and rest are combined. Yet, in a different song, he proclaims: It’s a Wonderful World. The experience of the rainbow colours in nature, human love expressed simply, and the awakening of a newborn child, all give a glimpse and an actual experience of our longed for meaning.

The final movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, in which a peaceful awakening and renewal following a storm, is a wonderful example. This experience is beautifully captured in the early Disney movie, Fantasia. Leonard Cohen’s words in the song, Anthem, follow a similar path: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” In another song, Cohen sings of a cold and broken hallelujah. These images of light express the possibility and challenge of hope out of despair, of joy out of sorrow, of beauty out of pain, of peace out of suffering.

The image of enduring rest conveys a similar experience, as well as the understanding and caring that can emerge from such experience. The image of rest expresses the notion of a release from the striving, the longing, the hurt, the failures, all the wearying things that go to make up the struggling, wrestling, coping character of life–a rest from life’s labours, so to speak. In his book, Sabbath, Wayne Muller emphasizes the need of time where, “we are valued not for what we have done or accomplished, but simply because we have received the gentle blessing of being miraculously alive. … [where] “the sweet womb of sacred rest enfolds us, heals and restores us.”

In this context,  the meaning of rest is not just ceasing from activity, from keeping busy, which is often a form of escapism. It is rather resting comfortably in who we are. This includes a recognition of limitations, tendencies, faults, yet the conviction that who we are is deeper than and finally untouched by all of these. As Meister Eckhart expresses it: “There is a place in the soul that has never been wounded.”

In her book, Bitter/Sweet, Susan Cain writes that it is “about the recognition of the both/and of life–that light and dark, birth and death, bitter and sweet, are forever paired. We need both to accept that reality and also in some way transcend it. This is our inmost longing which can be seen as a longing for home. … This idea–of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence, and love–is the heart of this book.”

The above songs and stories all reflect the both/and of life, the inseparability of love and fear, joy and sorrow, light and darkness. Containing these words in the beauty of music or the unity of a story is a concrete way of saying that they are meaningful. They express the conviction and hope that there is a lasting worth and purpose to every life. Sorrow and pain do not take away that meaning, but are somehow encompassed within it. At the same time, there are moments in life that make it difficult to feel that value.

As in Leonard Cohen’s song, we all have cracks of vulnerability, grief, and sorrow, It is perhaps in these cracks that the light of hope, love, and meaning gets in. And perhaps these cracks allow a glimpse of the sacred and beautiful self that lies beneath and is untouched by all the trials of life.

May the beauty of who you are shine forth from any darkness. May you discover and gradually live from the place in your soul that has never been wounded.”

Norman King
December 14, 2025

The Gift and Call to Life-giving

Full Writing, Ours

The last time we spoke of meaning as a sense of worth and purpose. We may see our life as the gathering and gift of self–the gathering of ourselves into our hands as something of value in order to give ourselves to something worthwhile. Our sacred worth is something we discover–not prove or acquire. It is a gift to accept, honour, and live according to, in ourselves and others.

I would suggest further that every experience has an underlying pattern –that of a gift and call. It can be seen further as a gift and call to bring something to life in self, others, our world, rather than put something to death. Even further it can be seen as the gift and call to bring something to live even out of the many deaths in the midst of life. I find this model best illustrated in a Grimm’s folktale.

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THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON
There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table cloth or let it run out of his mouth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove, and they gave him his food to eat in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough of it. And he used to look toward the table with his eyes full of tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said nothing and only sighed. Then they bought him a wooden bowl for a few pennies, out of which he had to eat.

They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old began to gather some bits of wood upon the ground. “What are you doing there?” Asked the father. “I am making a little trough,” answered the child, “for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.”
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while, and presently began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and henceforth always let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he did spill a little of anything.

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In the story, the couple first see themselves as independent, self-reliant, and in charge. They see life chiefly in terms of the functions or roles that people have, rather than in terms of the relationships they form. They see life in terms of what people do rather than who they are. As a result, they see the old man largely as a burden, an unwelcome obligation, As a result, the grandfather feels unwelcome and is filled with sadness and perhaps despair.

But the action of the child really hits home to the couple. They begin to realize their hurtful insensitivity, and start to see and treat the grandfather differently. They begin to regard him as a person to be cherished rather than just a nuisance to be tolerated. They come to a new way of seeing things, and so to a new and more compassionate way of acting and living.

In other words, a new insight or awareness is given to them, and with it comes the challenge to act accordingly. A new way of seeing is given to them and a new way of acting is demanded of them. This is true, perhaps, of every human experience, although it is most noticeable in the deeper ones. In every human experience, possibly, something is given to us and something is called forth from us. In this perspective, every human experience is to some extent both a gift and a call (or task).

As an example, with the gift of friendship calls forth the task not to betray it. The gift of entrusting our hopes and fears calls for honouring that trust.. Even the painful the loss of someone close summons us to cherish their heritage and deal creatively over time with our grief.

The gift and call themselves have a pattern? If the couple in the story did not change their treatment of the grandfather, they would further hurt and sadden him, perhaps even kill his spirit. On the other hand, their caring response could help to heal his wound, gladden his heart, and bring new life to his last days. A friendship betrayed can kill that bond, whereas honouring it can enrich and enliven that friendship.

In this perspective, the gift and call open up two possible directions: either to bring something to life or to put something to death in ourselves and others.. We can move either towards life-giving or death dealing; create life or destroy it. And this direction can refer to all the forms and dimensions of life–physical, emotional, mental, artistic, economic, political, international, etc. The basic gift and task concerns life and death: bringing to life or putting to death.

In this perspective, then, in every human experience, though most noticeably in those that are deepest and most crucial, we are enabled and summoned to bring something to life rather than put something to death in ourselves, in others, in the society and world we live in. So, our life story is the story of many gifts and tasks or calls that are woven into our lives, and it is the story of the ways in which we respond to the gift and call, whether in a life-giving or a death-dealing way.

To go a step further, we can also speak of being enabled and summoned to bring something to life, even out of the many deaths in the midst of life–arising from disappointment, sickness, failure, loss, rejection, hatred, social injustice, and anything else that takes life away in self and others. A vividly concrete example of bringing to life, putting to death, and bringing to life even out of death is found, respectively, in procreating a child; in neglecting, battering or abusing a child; and in bringing an abused child to physical, emotional, mental, and other forms of health. This last instance is a case of bringing to life even out of the many deaths in the midst of life.

May you come more and more to realize your own sacred worth, that of persons near and far, and of all living beings, and of all that is. May you come more and more to experience and live your life as a gift and call to bring something to life in yourself and others and our world, even out of the many deaths in the midst of life.
Norman King, October 15, 2025

Finding meaning, a sense of worth and purpose

Full Writing, Ours

The last time we reflected on trust, trust in ourselves and in the process of life unfolding within ourselves. It is also trust in the meaningfulness of life, and essentially of the unfolding universe. A key factor here is meaning. I think that there are two components of meaning: a sense of worth and a sense of purpose.

We wrote that trust in self requires both awareness of our deepest, inmost self and a conviction of the worth, value, sacredness, of that self. As we said, this is a gradual, never ending process, and it involves a struggle. Our limitations, mistakes, and even wrongdoing can drag us down and make us feel no good or worthless. A first step here is to become aware of how we talk down to ourselves. Then we may try to not to engage with or accept as true this negative self-talk. I like to say that we should never talk to ourselves other than we would talk to a hurt or angry child on our best day.

Sharon Salzberg, meditation instructor, says of such negative thoughts and feelings that we should see them as visitors, but not give them the run of the house. We have all the human feelings, even the most frightening ones, but that we do not have to act on them.

We are all limited, or as philosopher, Sam Keen, put it, we are all flawed human beings. Yet our sacredness is compatible with and even part of our flawed nature. Henri Nouwen speaks of the wounded healer. Woundedness is part of the human condition, but sacredness remains and we can still heal one another. Out of her suffering andn poverty Rapunsel is able to restore sight to her husband. Our own wounds, if borne creatively, can be a source of vision and healing for one another.

It is fascinating that in Greek mythology, the wisest persons, those who see most clearly and deeply, such as Tiresias the seer, and later, Oedipus, are blind, as is Shakespeare’s king Lear. Our creativity, wisdom, and love seem to emerge in some degree from the suffering that is part of the human condition

Al this is to say that we are each a being of sacred worth. What is deepest within us, discovered gradually, with struggle, and with the help of others, and over time, is our own underlying sacred worth. And since we are a being in process, a being whose life unfolds over time, the process in becoming who we are is also meaningful and, as we have said, trustworthy.

The other component of meaning is purpose, a “why” of our existence. We may think of our self as gradually coming into the hands of our awareness and decision, and coming into our hands as something of worth. This process can be described as the gathering of self into our hands. The next step is to place that self, to give that sacred self to something worthwhile.

The word “purpose,” in its Latin roots, means placed before, something in front of us that we can reach for. It is something to which we can give ourselves. It is what we can live for. The opposite is to be empty-handed, to have nothing in front of us to reach for, nothing to give ourselves to, nothing to live for. This is the opposite of trust and hope; it is despair.

There is a line in the poem by Robert Frost that expresses this experience. In Death of a Hired Man, Frost tells the story of the old man, Silas, who had a particular skill in bundlng hay, but was estranged from his family and unreliable in coming to work. He is described as having “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.” His working days are over and “he has come home to die,” to the only place that even remotely has seemed at home to him at least in recent years. The wife of the couple who had hired him describes home as: “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

The poem suggests the experience of purpose as having something to which we can give ourselves and our life.

In the plays bearing his name, Oedipus passes from ignorance to awareness, from cleverness to wisdom, a path that is transformed by through suffering. In his final play, Oedipus at Colonus, the 90 year old Sophocles portrays the death of Oedipus. He says farewell to his daughters with these words.”Yet one little word can change all pain. That word is LOVE, and love you’ve had from me more than any man can ever give.” His final wisdom is that the meaning of life is love.

Viktor Frankl echoes a similar theme. “I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a person can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of humans is through love and in love.”

We have referred previously to Albert Einstein’s conviction that love is the most powerful, yet unseen, force in the universe. Such love energy explains everything. It is at once essential to our survival and gives meaning to life.

Once again the meaning of life is portrayed in terms of love, not in a narrow romantic sense, but as the gift of one’s whole self from the heart to something beyond the self, whether a person, a value, a life story, a cause. To be able to do so, a person must have a healthy and mature acceptance of self, a recognition of self as a being of worth, as a sacred self. In other words, in order to give oneself a person must have a sense that they have something to give, that they are a someone worth giving.

Once again we return to the understanding meaning as the gathering and gift of self, as a sense of worth and purpose.

May you come more and more to recognize your own intrinsic worth, to experience yourself as a sacred self. And may the sense that you have something to give and are and a someone worth giving. And may you find what or who is worth the gift of your whole self.

Norman King, September 21, 2025

Trust in Self, Life, the Universe.

Full Writing, Ours

I last reflected on vulnerability, and spoke of openness to the core of our own being, to one another, and to the mystery of life in its blend of joy and sorrow. We mentioned briefly that such openness implies and requires a degree of trust. In order to be vulnerable, to allow another enter our inner space, trust is essential. So, a few thoughts on trust might be in valuable.

I think that the key ingredients of trust are at once a trust in ourselves and a trust in life itself, in the universe. The central implication is the challenge to become ourselves a trustworthy person.

Trust in ourselves means a trust in the deepest part of ourselves, our essential core. To do so implies being aware of and in touch with that core. This is a gradual and never complete process. It involves going beyond the surface of life, the constant pulls from outside. It involves going beyond the scripts of a society that stresses possessions and power over others, a viewpoint that preys upon our fears which are channelled into hostility, and into an “us”versus “them” mentality.

This process of self-awareness unfolds gradually–as we have mentioned often–through solitude, friendship, and social outreach. This uncovering process occurs through quiet solitude in which we become present to ourselves and allow what is deepest within us to emerge to the surface of our awareness. It occurs through friendship, especially its expression in open conversation from our core. It develops through compassion in which we reach our from our deep within ourselves to another who is suffering. It comes through activity in which we place our whole heart, and later become aware of that heart. It takes place through social responsibility and the struggle for social justice, in which we recognize and strive to create situations in which people’s true self may unfold.

Beyond awareness of self within is wider context, trust requires a sense that our core self, who we truly and deeply are, is of worth or value, that we are each a sacred self. Perhaps the most fundamental, underlying form of trust is trust in ourselves. Such trust implies that it is safe, true, and valuable to trust in ourselves, and in the unfolding process of life within ourselves. It implies that we actually experience our basic identity as a sacred self, or are moving in that direction. This of course is the central conviction of everything I have ever said or written, and remains for me always an unending challenge.

Beyond trust in self, extending to trustworthy others, in is trust in the context in which we live our our lives a trust in life itself, in the universe. In his “wonder-ful” book Apology for Wonder, Sam Keen has written that the basis for an authentic life is trust in self and trust in the context of life. He recalls the work of Erik Erikson, who has maintained that basic trust as a necessary component of a healthy personality.

“The foundations of gracefulness,”Keen writes, “are trust in the context within which action must take place and confidence in the ability of the self to undertake appropriate action. … Tension, fear and anxiety are the results of a vote of ‘no confidence.’ … In the final analysis, authentic human life rests upon the inner conviction of the ultimate trustworthiness of reality; the conviction that the ultimate context out of which we emerge into our own hands, and into which we and the self and world we fashion, disappear, is ultimately life-furthering.”

Scholars such Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, Hans Kung, and Karl Rahner, have maintained that basic trust in the meaningfulness of life is the root and heart of all religion. Holocaust survivor and psychologist, Viktor Frankl, reinforces this view by asserting that meaning can be found even in the midst of unavoidable suffering. Student of religion, Karen Armstrong, further states that practical compassion is the universal expression of such a conviction.

In a letter to his daughter, Albert Einstein writes that love is the most powerful unseen force in the universe. Such love energy explains everything and gives meaning to life. “If we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.”

Finally James Doty, late Founder of the Stanford University Centre for Compassion, contrasts what he calls the fear mode and the heart mode. We are hardwired for heart mode, he states. Our purpose is to love ourselves, and to love other people. At the Stanford Centre, they teach compassion for self. They urge us to give ourselves positive affirmations, that we are worthy, good enough, deserving.

A lot of the negative self-talk, Doty comments, comes from the baggage we carry from our childhood. It then shapes many of our decisions, our relationships, our occupations. This negative self-talk creates a false narrative. It leads us to create the limited belief systems that imprison us.

But, Doty says, we can come to see this is a story we can change. We can change what we believe. In the heart mode, we are coming from a place of service, where we are actively visualizing positive beliefs about ourselves that we are good, worthy, loved. Fundamentally, our world is one we create.

He adds that most people are loving, kind people inside. But they have been battered often by the forces that make them think that is not the case, or that they don’t deserve love. Everybody deserves love. Everybody deserves dignity. Most people, if they actually sit quietly, and are present to and listen to themselves, they realize the falseness of the dominant narrative. If they practice such mindfulness, for example, they recognize that they don’t first of all want things. The want food for the table, shelter, caring relationships, meaningful lives.

And if we look through that lens of what we are doing to be of service to help my family and my environment, it will ultimately help us as well. Our physiology works at its best when we are focused on others, when we are trying to be of service.

May you come more and more to recognize that your deepest self is a sacred valuable self and is trustworthy. May you recognize that your deepest and truest orientation is towards caring, compassion, justice, and love. May you more and more discern which persons you meet and which life situations are trustworthy. And may you strive in whatever ways possible for you to contribute to a more trustworthy society

Vulnerability in Self, Toward Others, Community, and the Mystery of Life

Full Writing, Ours

We wrote last time that kindness to ourselves and others in our everyday life is a key to physical and emotional well being, and is at the heart of all genuine spirituality. At the same time, it is also crucial to exercise some form of social responsibility in accordance with our gifts and the concrete context of our lives. Here we may speak of taking part in a struggle towards creating a world in which respect for the sacred worth of each person is recognized, honoured, and fostered. This approach means that, even when opposition is necessary, it is crucial not to deny or violated the basic human dignity of anyone.

As we noted last time, in their book, On Kindness, Barbara Taylor and Adam Phillips define kindness as the ability to bear our own and others vulnerability. Kindness implies an openness from within ourselves to another or others. In Oscar Wilde’s folk tale, The Selfish Giant, it is by breaking down the walls we have built around us, and letting in children–the the springs of new life–that we grow and develop. Otherwise, we remain in a stagnant winter of heart, hiding behind walls of defensiveness.

At the same time, openness from within allows the entry of both joy and sorrow, healing and wounding. It allows a vulnerable heart. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin vulnus which means wound. The word, vulnerability means, literally, able to be wounded, to be hurt. Yet there is a wider sense as well, as found in the Hebrew Song of Songs. A translation of one line reads, “You have wounded my heart; in Latin, vulnerasti cor meum. In this context, vulnerability does not mean an injury inflicted. Rather it indicates an openness that allows another to reach our core.

An article written many years ago in a Homemakers magazine by Carol Allen has resonated with me ever since. Her topic was joy, and she brought out how joy and sorrow are an inseparable part of life. In her words: “A heart frozen against pain can only stifle joy. … What joy requires is an open, undefended heart — a heart willing to accept the slings and arrows as no less intrinsic to life than the bouquets. … Those who have an aura of joyfulness in adult life are frequently those who have also suffered greatly.”

In this wider sense, vulnerability means an openness to the full experience of life. This attitude would include openness to the depth of our own being, to the entire variety of the feelings, yearnings, and thoughts that are part of who we are. And it is openness to our unique identity that flows from and through and beyond into all the corners of our life. It flows as well into everyone and everything that is bound up with our life. It is an openness that also allows others–at least in situations of trust–to enter our own personal sanctuary. It is finally an openness to the vast mystery of life, to the energy that flows within and through and beyond all that is. It is a recognition that this is a mystery beyond our grasp, literally a reality that we cannot seize or dominate or control, but a mystery of which we are part and which pervades and envelopes all that is.

An essential part of this recognition, a core element of this vulnerability, is that we do in fact have limitations, weaknesses, and errors in our life. Yet to do so is to recognize that this is a reality that we share with all other human beings. It is to recognize that our limits are not a denial of, but inseparable from our sacredness–that we are sacred even as and precisely as wounded beings. Leonard Cohen has perhaps most clearly expressed this truth in his song Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” These words vividly express that every life is woven with joy and sorrow, and that it is often in our experience of weakness and pain that the light of truth, compassion, and healing is able to enter. It is able to enter not only into our own awareness but into our awareness of and compassion for others, who share our human condition.

An early life experience brought this reality home to me at the age of six. Walking to my grandmother’s for lunch in grade one, I was struck by a truck and taken to the Toronto Sick Children’s hospital. After two weeks in hospital, I was allowed to return home A few days later, I was allowed to get up. I was delighted, but took two steps and fell. I could not walk. I still recall the vivid impression of utter surprise, total disbelief, and sheer terror.

Very soon, I was walking again as usual, but I have never forgotten how fragile and vulnerable life can be, and how utterly precious. The birth of my younger brother three years later with a chronic heart defect, and the subsequent heart surgery at the age 4½, that allowed him to live for 26 years, only reinforced that impression. In those early years were planted and took root the seeds of awareness that life cannot be taken for granted, that it is a precious and fragile gift to be cherished, appreciated and shared, and that one needs always have a concern for the most vulnerable in our midst.

May you become more and more comfortable with your own vulnerability. May you share it more fully with others, when trust is possible. And may the light of openness, friendship, compassion, and kindness radiate more and more from the crack of this vulnerability

Norman King, August 11, 2025

 

Kindness Is Essential for Survival and Well Being

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In the last reflection, we brought out that our unique identity, our personal script, our lived story, is part of a larger story, not only of the earth but of the universe itself. At its core, it is not a story of isolation and hostility, but of interconnection and interdependence.

We also noted that the direction in which the universe unfolds is towards kindness, compassion, and justice, despite the fear, hostility, and violence that seem to permeate the present world.

In her book, Bitter/Sweet, Susan Cain observes that Darwin has been readily misinterpreted. She notes that perhaps his view is better understood, not as survival of the fittest, but as survival of the kindest. Very shortly before her death, writer June Callwood stated simply: “I believe in kindness.” She says it can be shown in very simple things, such as holding the door open for someone. The Dalai Lama has also said: “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.” This view also calls to mind Einstein’s words to his daughter that the underlying energy of the universe and the source of its meaning, is love. This is also the view of Teilhard de Chardin.

I recall a poem by W. H. Auden, from my undergraduate days, which found its way into an essay assignment for Marshall McLuhan. I experienced the honour of two courses, and a number of personal conversations. Auden’s poem is titled September 1, 1939. It begins: “I sit in one of the dives/ On Fifty-second Street/ Uncertain and afraid/ As the clever hopes expire/ Of a low dishonest decade.”

A later verse adds: “For the error bred in the bone/ Of each woman and each man/ Craves what it cannot have,/ Not universal love/ But to be loved alone. His conclusion is: “We must love one another or die.”

Some years ago, an article in Maclean’s magazine had the title: “The world is broken—and human kindness is the only solution.” It concluded with the words of James Doty, founder of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. “Compassion is what’s going to save our species. …The reality is that for our species to survive, we have to recognize we are all one and everyone deserves the right to dignity, the right to food, the right to security, to shelter and to health care. And until we go on a path toward that world view, we are doomed.”

Recently, I heard an interview with a judge, Frank Caprio, who said that compassion is essential. On the bench he took that approach of listening to people’s stories, to understand what they were dealing with, and treating them with respect and compassion, no matter what the charge against them. He saw it as especially important if children were involved.

We mentioned last time as well that we do need to make a contribution in the larger social context according to our gifts. Yet, in reality, most of our lives are lived out within the smaller circles of family, friends, social contexts, and occasional encounters in the course of our daily lives. These can, however, have a profound impact on the larger societal context. This view has been clearly expressed by anthropologist, Margaret Mead. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

In terms of the smaller circle of the personal, interpersonal, and casual encounter situations, the response summoned seems to be the same: kindness. Translated differently we might reword this approach and speak of acknowledging and responding to the sacred worth or value of each and every person. Even when strong opposition to injustice, cruelty, or hatred is called for, the humanity of those who are opposed would never be denied, nor should they be reduced only to our opposition to them. Hatred is always a problem and never a solution.

In The Keys to Kindness, psychologist Claudia Hammond writes that kindness is at the heart of human relationships. It can improve our own lives and that of others, both physically and mentally.

The root of the word kindness is kin, which expresses a connection to another person or persons. It is also cognate with the word kind, as in kindergarten, and it means child. And of course children most obviously depend upon others, and are among the most vulnerable members of our society. In their book, On Kindness, Barbara Taylor and Adam Phillips define kindness as the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself. They add that the pleasure of kindness is that it connects us with others, but it also makes us aware of our own and other people’s vulnerability.

Awareness both of our connection to others and our vulnerability is something that is often denied in our culture. Our society stresses being independent, antagonistic to, and in competition with, one another. It suggests that we need to assert ourselves at the expense of one another. Yet the pervasive loneliness in our society reminds us of our need for connection.

A wonderful example is offered in the folk tale written by Oscar Wilde, The Selfish Giant. After returning home, the giant finds many children playing in his garden. He becomes enraged, chases them away, and builds a wall around the garden to keep everyone out. The result is that no flowers grow, no birds sing, and it is always winter, with icy winds. Some time later, the giant hears a bird singing and notices some flowers growing. He sees that children have crept back in to play in the garden through cracks that have appeared in the wall. He then realizes what has happened. He has a complete change of heart, and welcomes and plays with the children for the rest of his life.

As the children re-enter the garden through crack in its wall, it is once again springtime. The change in weather from winter to spring indicates that the children bring new life to the giant. This story suggests that unless we have cracks in the walls of defensiveness, cracks of vulnerability, so that children can come through–that is, new life, new thoughts, new images–then we shall remain bleak and cold and dark and desolate inside. We tear down rather than build our walls through creative, life-giving, generous, even sacrificial compassion, caring, and love. And a key ingredient is simple acts of kindness to ourselves and others.

It is striking that Taylor and Phillips define kindness as the ability to bear our own and others vulnerability. Perhaps acts of kindness, however small, require us to open our heart, both to flow outwards and to receive within. It may well be that kindness implies the recognition that we are incomplete, that we need one another, that we are invariably connected. Such openness always implies the possibility of being hurt. Yet to be closed always ensures the our lives are ever in winter, ever in a season of lovelessness, even of fear and anger. Possibly turning to kindness, aside from its assistance to well-being, is a step towards openness to deeper connection, to learning the greater openness of love. And beyond intimacy, it is a step in extending that caring in wider and wider circles.

May you more and more have enough kindness for yourself, and extend it gradually to those near and far. And may you make whatever contribution you can to creating a world where interdependence and connectedness are recognized, and where kindness and compassion are honoured.

The Inward Journey and Outward Expression

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In his book Markings, Dag Hammarskjold wrote: “The longest journey is the journey inwards, of one who has chosen their destiny, who has started upon the quest for the source of their being.”

In a recent interfaith Zoom meeting, a presentation was given by Dr. Darren Kew, Dean of , Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. Among other things, he stressed that the starting place for peacebuilding is our own internal journey. This is the never finished process of getting in touch with our inner self. A part of this process is dealing with our own inner pain, wounds, and conflicts. We are then able to come to a deeper understanding of others and empathy for them.

Dr. Kew went on to say that the next step is storytelling. This is a process in which we engage in dialogue with others. This is not, at first, a matter of discussing principles and practices, similarities and differences. It is rather an exercise in storytelling, in which we unfold something of our own inner journey. Part of this journey might be from a closed mind to an open heart, from dogmatism to appreciation, from proselytizing to listening. Dr. Kew tells of two people of differing religions who moved from l hatred to mutual friendship by first dealing with their owner inner reality and them sharing that journey in their personal story.

The poet, Mary Oliver, expresses a similar approach:“Instructions for living a life./Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” In this regard, our experience to explore includes an openness to the worlds around us from the beauty of a flower opening to the ferocity of a storm. And our own inner experiences echoes this wide range found in nature. We experience all the feelings, from joy and love to fear and hostility. It is essential to recognize these, but not necessarily express them outwardly.

The challenge here, it seems, is to be in touch with our deepest inner experience. This is described as a journey, because it is a voyage of discovery. We are often largely unknown to ourselves, as when we ask ourselves, “Why did I do that?” Or we might fall into a similar behavioural trap and utter, “Oh no, not again, the same old story.” Folk tales, such as Snow White and Hansel and Gretel; express this part of the journey as going through a dark forest. Sleeping Beauty talks of the “prickly” or negative aspects by saying that who we most deeply are may be hidden been a hedge of thorns.

What all these stories suggest is that, while they depict an outer journey, they are really portraying an inner journey. Joseph Campbell writes that the journey of the hero or heroine, while told in terms of outer geography, is really an effort to name our inner geography.

One aspect of this process is that images alone can express a more than literal or even factual; truth. They can point to what is to some extent beyond words. My favourite example is from the Shakespearean play, King Lear. After a series of traumatic events, he looks forward to spending his last days with the daughter, whom he finally realizes, is the one who truly loved him. But first he expresses the pain he has felt. He does not simply state that he has been deeply hurt, but proclaims: “But I am bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.” While not a literal statement, it conveys vividly and forcefully.,his burden of sorrow. In a way that makes us feel it and enriches our understanding.

What is also striking about all these stories is that they include or are followed by a reaching out. Yet this reaching out is not an inflicting of our own unfaced, not struggled with, unresolved or not transcended neediness, insecurity, pain, fear, or hostility. Rather the outreach then proceeds from inmost true self, from our authentic presence, from our developed gifts. They are an outreach that not a disguised taking, but as giving. It flows not from our emptiness, but from our fulness

Spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, asserts that the outer journey into compassion and social justice is essential, but it cannot be separated from the corresponding inner journey. He writes: “What is the relation of this [contemplation] to action? Simply this. One who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his or her own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He or she will communicate to them, nothing but the contagion of their own obsessions, their aggressiveness, their ego-centred ambitions, their delusions about ends and means, their doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.”

More succinctly, a more recent spiritual writer, Richard Rohr, insists that “suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.”

We might say that the ultimate gift we have to the people and world around us is the gift of who we are, of our authentic self, our real person , not of the image fashioned out of others reaction to us or their plan for us. It is not the imposition of a role foisted on us, It is not the action of an impersonator, but the expression of who we are, in dialogue with others and our world.

It then flows into the particular gifts that we have and have developed. .These indicate what we have to offer. We can then ask where and to whom do I offer these gifts. We may ask as well what is most needed in our society today and what do I have to offer that situation. Ecologian Thomas Berry’s response was that much is needed in our threatened and fragile world, all the gifts of everyone. His suggestion is: “Do what you love and become competent.”

May you all continue on your inner journey, discover and live your true story, and share your gifts in a world that is in profound need of them.