Jagged Pill

You live you learn, you love you learn

You cry you learn, you lose you learn

You bleed you learn, you scream you learn

I guess Alanis Morisette figured it out years ago...I thought almost certainly I had figured it out years ago, too but things still creep up and then wallop you. Hard. Sometimes you feel like a fool, sometimes you feel sorry for yourself, sometimes both if you've been hit hard enough. Though, I'll admit, its not so much the impact or the force of the blow; I've been fortunate to make it out intact and for that I'm very thankful. Its much more about the frequency. The things that have happened have happened in a relatively short period of time. It can feel like your being engulfed in negativety and dissent. And when you feel like you're being swallowed, things start to look hazy and unclear, without a direction of where to go. I hate not knowing what to do, and that, in and of itself, can often be the problem. I've failed to acknowledge that things aren't in my hands; I've been failing to acknowledge that, instead trying to fix things all my own or, worse, just accept defeat.  I think the reality is that clarity often causes confussion, while murkiness can lead you out. Its the realization that maybe you don't have all the answers, maybe you don't have a handful of options, you just have the sacredness of calling on someone else...

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

                  - C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces