Creating a Space for Tenderness

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my father's death. What was perhaps saddest for me was how little I felt about it. I think this was because I mourned the emotional absence of my father in my life many years ago. He was a man whose pain became his prison, even though the door was unlocked and unguarded. I suppose it is like the elephants trained for the circus--at first they are constrained in a way that is painful so that eventually they can just be tethered by a small rope, which they could easily break if they tried, but mentally they have been conditioned to accept their captivity.

I consider the biofeedback work I do a gift, because when a stranger walks in and sits down with me they are giving consent for me to facilitate a dialogue with the higher intelligence of their body/mind/spirit. What is transformative about the process, for me anyway, is that they are trusting me to hold them as a precious, sacred being and to witness what is blocking their energy with compassion. Time and again I am humbled by the tears that are released when I ask a person who has been viewed as a social outcast in some way, Has anyone ever really seen your tenderness? I'm wondering if perhaps those who are the most tender, are those who develop the hardest exteriors and the most disruptive behaviors?

Dad, I'm feeling you today and offering a prayer in your honor:
Let me be tender, and make that safe for you too, whatever form you may now show up in.
I love you, please forgive me.

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

~ Mitsugi Saotome

Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson