The Wound Is the Place Where the Light Enters You (Rumi)

A wound is the most obvious abrupt opening into our inside.  While tangible and visible, a wound can also transcend to the hope of seeing beyond our insides, even beyond our world. Indeed, when I was a kid I often thought that the full moon was a clean-edged wound into the dark sky from which I could see the bright universe on the “other side”. 

Then I went to school and was told that the Moon was just a planet, a satellite to our Earth. Just like Charon is to Pluto. Interestingly, now that we know that Pluto is not a planet, I am hoping that soon we will discover that the Moon is in fact a hole in the dark skies above us…

This morning I came face–to-face to a wound. It was in a parking lot. Upon exiting my car I saw a large tree that had its massive branches too precariously attached to its trunk. So, a creative team from the city landscaping, had decided to somehow open wounds at the base of the branches, insert steel pipes into these wounds, and bet that the tree would heal around the pipes and make these its support.

And the idea was a good one. Looking at the wood and bark that have grown over the steel pipes I assumed that this intervention was done many decades ago.

… A few hours later when I returned to my car I recalled (even recited) a few lines from Rumi.

                                      My friend, in friendship I am bound to you:

                                 Wherever you set foot, I shall be the ground.

We all heal, at least from the outside. When we heal, often from inside out, we close openings others can see. We become scarred in order not to scare others. Sometimes those scars are cherished and most welcomed by others as if pearls made by mollusks to coat the intruder (often an irritant parasite) in nacre.

Other times, we heal from inside out to liberate our very inside. To make it free of itself.  As I took the ramp to the freeway, I found comfort in another line from Rumi:

I knocked and the door opened but I found that I have been knocking from the inside

January 28, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016