Wounded

Over the weekend, I bought a used book from the library.

The book is The Dance of Life, by Edward T. Hall.

You would think by the title that it was a self-help book.

In fact, that may have been the section were it was discovered.

Really, it is a book about Time and all the forms of measuring it.

Even more, it is about how cultures measure and observe Time differently, and the conflicts that has created throughout history.

For example, in our Western culture we think time heals all wounds.

In the Hopi culture, time does not heal wounds. A wound is a wound, whether it be 3 months or 300 years old.

That concept fascinates me!

Could that be why I still tear up when I think of kissing my grandpa good-bye as he was dying of bone cancer back in 1986? When someone speaks of their child that died, you can still sense their wound...fresh, even if it happened 20 years ago.

Someone hurts us, or breaks our heart - more wounds.

Can we take our wounds with us?

Can we carry them without dwelling in them?

What if we use our old wounds as mortar to build a wall so we don't get wounded again?

What if we accepted that a wound won't heal, but we choose to live anyway?

And love...how does love play into our wounds?

Usually we expect love to heal the wound, or fill the hole the wound has left. What if it can't?

What if love can only surround our wounds? And in the moments we fall back into the wounds, we can eventually choose to pull ourselves out - pull ourselves back out to the surrounding love.

I don't know.
I ponder.