There isn't much we can control in the world,
But we can control our breath.
Let's inhale,
Bringing all kinds of fresh air deep inside our bodies.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
Last summer,
My daughter had an internship in Massachusetts,
And when I went out to see her,
We visited Orchard House,
The family home of Louisa May Alcott,
Who wrote the classic Little Women.
My daughter and I love the book,
So it felt right and good to make a pilgrimage to visit the house.
Now,
In general,
When I travel,
I can get a little bored on tours.
I often don't care about whatever the very eager tour guide is talking about.
But as we moved from room to room at Orchard House,
I was enthralled,
Mostly because Louisa's youngest sister,
May,
Had drawn or painted beautiful images all over the house.
There were horses and chariots,
Mythic figures,
And my favorite,
A tiny brown owl on a branch with the bark peeling off.
I wanted a house dotted with paintings and drawings like that.
Inhale.
Exhale.
But as we walked through,
I couldn't help but recall the fictional youngest sister in the book,
Amy,
The artist.
At one point,
Amy gets annoyed at Joe,
The main character,
Who is a writer of tales.
And let me add,
A hand writer of tales.
And what does Amy do one time when she gets angry at Joe?
She burns one of Joe's manuscripts.
If you're familiar with Little Women,
You know that Marmee,
The girl's mother,
Is the moral equivalent of Atticus Finch.
They are both characters known for their ever-present calm and wisdom.
Now,
In my opinion,
Amy deserves to be fed worms for the rest of her life.
Does that happen?
Nope.
Marmee kinda sorta scolds Amy,
But not really.
Joe is left to suck it up.
Inhale.
Exhale.
This scene offers us two lessons.
Probably more than that,
But I just am gonna focus on two.
First,
The people who are closest to us know how to hurt us the most.
There's actually a word for this.
Profanation.
Basically,
You know what is holy to someone,
So therefore you have the ammunition to hit them where it hurts.
For instance,
I eat my breakfast almost every day from a plate that my son found on a beach during a family vacation.
How the plate had survived the crashing waves,
I have no idea.
But I adore this plate.
Both of my kids refuse to eat off of this place because they do not want to be the one to break it.
But if one of them were to get really,
Really angry with me,
They could go into that cupboard,
Grab the plate,
And smash it in front of me.
Because they would know how much that would hurt my heart.
Inhale.
Exhale.
We know how to hurt one another.
And we often do hurt one another,
Usually when we are hurting.
That brings us to the second idea.
People often do not get what they deserve.
And this is where it gets even stickier to think about all of this.
When we are the ones who have been hurt,
When we've had to suffer the pain,
Then we want all kinds of vengeance and justice.
But when we are the ones who have done the hurting,
The profanation,
Well then we want boundless grace and mercy.
We are human.
And it occurs to me that there are two things that are true of each and every one of us.
None of us is perfect,
No matter how hard we try,
And we will die.
So,
We will be hurt.
And we will hurt because we are not perfect,
Because we are human.
Sometimes we have to live with the hurt that we have caused.
Sometimes we have to live with the hurt someone else has caused.
And all of these hurts can be little,
And all of these hurts can be devastating.
And all of them can fall somewhere in between.
Inhale.
Exhale.
This is really hard stuff to sit with.
It sort of feels like we're down in the sewers of humanity here.
But let's not stay down here and wallow.
So to crawl back out,
We need to acknowledge the hard truth that humans,
Ourselves included,
Hurt one another.
Then the question is,
When we have done that,
What can we do to attempt repair?
Inhale.
Exhale.
When others have hurt us,
What can we do to release that pain?
Inhale.
Exhale.
When we have to be the ones to suck it up and walk on with our lives,
What can we do?
Inhale.
And exhale.
There isn't much we can control in life.
But we can control our breath,
Which can lead us to our center,
Which can bring us to a more grounded and intentional place inside.
And then maybe we can pause before we say or do the thing that might hurt.
And if we have been hurt,
We can breathe.
We can center.
We can walk on.
Head held high.
Namaste.
