A Seed of Hope
A Seed of Hope
Recently I attended a wonderful creativity and writing workshop held by my friend Martyn Kendrick. In the workshop we were given one word and then asked to "free write" for twenty minutes without stopping and see where our writing took us. For months I have been paying attention to my ability and inability to be tolerant and compassionate. At times I feel I am succeeding and then I fall back into old beliefs and habits. One area that has been really tough for me is related to men who are abusive to women. As diligent as I have been, feeling tolerance and compassion for such men has been very challenging.
At the workshop I had a breakthrough. We were asked to write on the word "seed". What follows is the unedited story just as it came in one of my twenty minute free writings.
Seed, seed, the male, the one who plants his seed, the one who defiles, is defiled. The one who holds his hands open as midwife to the birth of a new calf....rough hands, calloused and thick from the hard physical demands of the small mixed farm in rural mid Ontario. His cow and her new calf are getting acquainted as she licks her babe clean of the blood and mucous of birth. He sits back on his haunches and breathes deeply. The twilight sky shows a soft ribbon of light; white, yellow and pink on the western horizon. Tomorrow will be a good day for haying.
His heart feels bruised and blessed at the same time. Birthing a new life always makes him confused with both joy and pain. The straw in the stall smells stale, like iron, from the afterbirth and urine expelled during the birthing process. His mended plaid work shirt is damp and clammy up to his forearms from his part in the experience.
He thinks of his wife; so tired from her part in keeping their family together. Eight children, simply too many and yet he achingly loves each and every one of them. At night he only wants to drink in the smell of their freshly bathed heads and hold them tightly to him. He knows that another baby will kill her and yet Mary is his deepest love and their physical union is as close to breathing as his heart is to hers.
He knows his temper gets the best of him when he is worrying about their future and he has more than once lashed out with that red blaze of anger. Too often he has left her bruised and battered. He silently weeps as he strokes the side of the new born calf. Buffeted and baffled by his emotions, confused and raw with a heart so big and a life so sad and so rich he looks up and sobs to the evening sky, "What will I do? Where do I go from here? Lord, help me!"
As I re-read what I had written I knew I had been given a miracle. For the first time a part of my heart, that had been closed to the pain and suffering of abusive men, by my own intolerance and judgment, opened and softened. As I wrote I felt what he felt. I became that man, that human being. I felt a true and unconditional love for this individual in their deep pain and suffering.
This experience has planted in me a new and precious seed. If in a matter of moments I could know such deep compassion then so could we all. Indeed, a seed has been planted. It is the seed of profound hope.