This week has been hard. Intense, concentrated, condensed into hard nuggets of time that spin and bounce away from me. Blazing with emotion and requiring ever-greater levels of both humble detachment and mental acuity.
There is a lot going on. In my own personal sphere of reality, I have begun a new novel, a new science class with lab and a new high level linguistics class. All things I love deeply, that feed my mind and spirit.
I am also noticing my own family in ways I have not necessarily viewed us before. I am finding new levels of cohesion, threads of unity that gleam like steel wire, strengths and capabilities I did not know we had. I have found it in studying the importance of truthfulness and the roles of parent and child, bent over a coffee table with Simon and Ana. I have found it when almost too big children cuddled up on my lap, for no reason whatsoever other than to love and be loved, in branches of cherry blossoms brought home to share, in a growing sense of effort and purpose that expresses itself in a desire to serve others. Maybe not always within the sphere of domestic chores, but certainly within our collective attitude and approach towards our community.
I don't think I can really take credit for any of it. This is a heritage of hard work and devotion that I can trace with clarity to my own experience with my grandparents, my own parents, my husband's family. As parents, we are given few tools to begin with, but as soon as we begin to ask the right questions, to apply ourselves with vigour, dedication and tenacity, the opportunities we are given to grow, to truly flourish, are immeasurable. But it is not easy. It is never easy.
There is a dear woman in our community who has suffered from terrible health with a beaming face for a very long time. She is younger than I am, incredibly intelligent, loving and creative. She spends what little energy and time she has caring for her mother who is also in ill health, and assisting her god-daughters in whatever way she can. For months we have asked if there is anything she needs, any help she would like. She has always declined. But last week she went into hospital yet again, and at last she said yes. We could help. Her house needed cleaning. My mother was up for the day, so we went over. It is not something that I can describe, really. I can only say that we spent hours and hours, and it is still not done. Asher came home and wept in my lap as I held him. Partly because he had never imagined such conditions could exist, but mostly because it broke his heart to think that this beloved friend had been living like this for all these months. We said so many prayers, tried to find small ways to show love and kindness. All of the children said over and over, no one should live like this. They were affected by the injustice of it, wounded because another human being had suffered.
We wondered if we should have taken them to help. We wondered if they should see such things. But we recalled Abdu'l-Baha's many hours spent caring for the ill, and how we are admonished to accustom our children to hardship. So we took them. It was hard. It was horrible.
But I now see in them a beauty and strength I did not see so clearly before. I see their capacity to love, to perceive truth and beauty and justice. In their actions, they demonstrate an unshakable willingness to serve others, to sacrifice their time and comfort, their very sense of reality, in order to benefit another precious soul. I have seen this in many small ways, but this week it shines like a bright jewel from each of their hearts.
I'm not sure if any of this is good to share. I am sure many parents would never make the decisions we made. But today as I said my morning prayers, I wept with gratitude to have been given these strong principles and tools of great beauty from those who came before me, and I bowed down in humble joy at the recognition of those with whom I now journey. As Gibran says, these children are not our children, and we can but watch these swift arrows fly forward and beyond the farthest scope of our own limitations.
So. No lovely pictures, despite the push of spring that surrounds us. Awkward, inelegant, stumbling thoughts only here today. But a full heart. A very full heart.
