Musings: Healing

I love going out each morning to see what’s happening with the mountains. Is Nounou submerged in clouds? Is Waialeale draped in mist? Is Kalepa bathed in sunshine? I live in a sort of bowl, with mountains visible all around, and each dawn, the scene is familiar, but fresh and new, a good metaphor for daily life.

Farmer Jerry Ornellas stopped his pick-up truck to chat this morning while I was out walking. He’d been talking with the Hindu monks about ahimsa, the practice of doing no violence. It’s not just our actions, but our thoughts and words that count, too.

No matter where you stand on the issue, you’ve gotta admit there’s been a lot of violent thought and talk associated with the Superferry lately. And violence creates wounds that have to be healed, or else we keeping on hurting.

Jerry was wondering how the islands can heal from this deep wounding. It’s easy to destroy, he said, but now what are we going to create?

It seems to me, after grappling with my own physical, emotional and spiritual healing for a number of years, that healing of any kind follows a similar process, and it’s an inherently creative one.

First, there’s acceptance of the pain. Next comes forgiveness of the perpetrator, whether it’s someone else, or oneself. Then we have to nurture love, and like any seed tucked into the soil, it takes time for it to grow. Time can dull the pain of wounds, but it doesn’t in and of itself heal them. That requires love, which is based in the recognition of connection — to ourselves, the planet, others. Like it or not, we’re all in this together.

It is only through love that we can achieve true justice. We'll have no lasting peace without it.