If It Be Your Will

As I was driving home from my son's indoor soccer game tonight, Judith Orloff was talking (from her book on my CD player) about surrendering to pain and letting the tears come as a release valve. She talked about how much she encourages her patients to cry, how healthy and necessary it is, and what opens the floodgates in her own life when she needs a good cry.

This song from Leonard Cohen was at the top of her list:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Like Judith, I'm a huge fan of both tears and the poet Leonard Cohen. I find this song really calming, settling, in a "we're not in charge" kind of way. 

I know that if I were in charge, things would be different than they are right now, but I'm really trying to trust the process and believe that this grief will open the door to something better.

I saw this quote on FB tonight on the same subject:

“When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life. Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says that this is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. But anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too, is a door to life. Here, also is the deepening of meaning – and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning, all is well.”
~A. Powell Davies

I can't say that all is well at the moment, but I guess that just means I haven't gotten to that point yet, because I have no doubt that my heart has been stretched by this loss. And considering how much it has stretched from the love I share with the New Englander, I have to believe that I am going to get to use it to both do good in the world and love and be loved fully...