Neck-Deep in the Rubble of a Broken Heart

God has come to you when you’ve been at your most serene moments, but God also has come to you in your darkest hours, when you were least hopeful and most unprepared.

Over time it becomes increasingly possible to remember—in both the heights and the troughs—that challenges, loss, and the many sad, bitter, and sometimes cruel faces of crises are, in fact, not impediments on the spiritual path, but stepping stones.

“There are circumstances that must shatter you; and if you are not shattered, then you have not understood your circumstances….” writes Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish.

Of course, when you are shattered by life, your immediate response is to steel yourself against feeling the brunt of the pain with its capacity to disassemble. No matter how many tears you shed, you can’t always make things go back the way they were, or you wished they could be. When you find yourself neck-deep in the rubble of your broken heart, how could you feel any way other than you’ve failed? But the real failure, Wieseltier teaches, would be “for your heart not to break.”

The antidote to the illusion of God as only peace is to trust that the entirety of one's journey through life is transpiring within the tender embrace of the Divine. Change, loss, and suffering are not exceptions to life. But it is also true that neither are unexpected joy, grace, awe, and acceptance exceptions, either.

And you, old friend, are called to embrace it all.

—Excerpt from Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life (Inner Traditions, December ‘24)